Dinner was over, but I didn't want to leave. There was no way in hell I was leaving Evangelina alone with her, not after what we now knew about Annia. But Bruce gave me a subtle signal to stay quiet and asked me to trust him, whispering that the psychopath would be out cold in less than fifteen minutes. Evangelina winked at me, tapping her nails against her glass and swirling her finger in the air, letting me know she'd slipped a sedative into her drink.
So I kissed that goddess and, with some truly terrible acting, gave Annia a hug. She was already yawning and, honestly, she disgusted me.
We celebrated in the elevator. Lucius and Bruce high-fived, and it was the detective who spoke first.
— "We owe it all to Carmilla. We'll be inside that place before you know it. It's late, so let's get some rest and recover our strength for tomorrow." He paused before adding, "Carmilla, I'm sorry about... well, you know."
I smiled and added:
— "Anything to save those girls from the most fortified mansion on the planet, packed with guards, concrete walls, nuclear bunkers, and a runway full of fighter jets and missiles."
Both of them answered at the exact same time:
— "Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you."
They looked at each other, and I only thought to myself, They're both so handsome... and I'm so dizzy from drinking too much.
Then I saw the stunned expressions on their faces and realized that... yeah, girl, whether it was the wine or the nerves, I hadn't kept that thought as internal as I'd intended. They had both heard me. I played dumb and stepped out of the elevator first, the same elevator that carried so many good memories for me.
I went to take a bath. I had a message from Evangelina on my phone that read: "Annia's asleep."
I sent her a kiss emoji, and she told me I was very brave. I liked that. I even looked at myself in the mirror and repeated out loud:
— "Carmilla the Brave."
Then I stuck my tongue out like a little girl and laughed, confirming without a doubt that alcohol and nerves are not a good combination for me.
Killian's message was the complete opposite. It said:
"Stay away from danger. Don't listen to that detective trying to use you as bait. The second I get there, I'm ripping his head off for putting you at risk."
At first, I got annoyed because I'm not one of those girls who constantly needs saving... or am I?
But at the same time, the protectiveness of that gorgeous man filled me with tenderness and turned me on.
The bathroom filled with steam. The bath felt incredible, and for who knows how long, I thought about nothing else until one unforgettable thought carved itself into my mind:
What if I die during the rescue? What if my life ends inside the Vandereck mansion? What if tonight is all I have left?
Negative thoughts started spiraling, and as you already know, my dear friend, the only cure I have for that is beauty.
So I wrapped myself in a towel and was about to run into Lucius's arms when I heard Evangelina enter from the other side and start arguing with her cousin.
From the tone of the conversation, it was obvious she was throwing something back in his face, though I couldn't fully understand what. Bruce insisted that if we made it out alive, he would make it up to her.
But she shot back:
— "And if not now, when? Tomorrow we might be dead."
That was when I decided to step out, still wrapped in my towel. I waved at them as I headed toward the master bedroom to be with Lucius, but Evangelina intercepted me halfway and pulled me into a hug.
We repeated the mantra together:
— "We're going to rescue those girls!"
Though, deep down, I was still thinking: What if this is our last night?
She noticed. She kissed me on the mouth and then covered my face with three more kisses. After that, she tried to walk past her cousin with an angry expression, but Bruce grabbed her and kissed her with so much passion that I decided to disappear into the bedroom before all that beauty electrocuted me.
Lucius, exhausted from his trip, was already asleep. I lay down in that bed so soft it felt like collapsing into a giant marshmallow, closed my eyes, and tried to drift off.
"When you choose one, the other will die."
I heard Clara the Seer's voice so clearly that I couldn't tell whether it had been a dream or not. I jolted awake with a pounding headache and realized I could still smell Evangelina's perfume drifting in from the living room.
I worried she'd stayed out there too long. If Annia woke up and didn't find her there, she'd start getting suspicious. The plan was to get her out into the streets of Paris early in the morning so she wouldn't be alone with Annia.
Lucius hadn't moved at all. I slipped on his white dress shirt, which hung almost to my knees, buttoned it halfway, and walked out to see what had happened.
Bruce was standing in the living room beside the bathroom door. He turned his face away so he wouldn't look at me through the sheer fabric of the shirt.
— "Evangelina's in there. She had a breakdown. Help me. You seem to be the only one who can calm her down. And please... cover yourself."
Then he immediately corrected himself.
— "No, sorry. I need to get used to it, or Annia will suspect we lied to her."
I had already grabbed the front of the shirt with one hand to keep the fabric away from my nipples when I asked him what had happened during the hours I'd been asleep.
— "Hours?" he replied. "You only slept for forty minutes. And what happened is that we discovered something. Look at my laptop."
I leaned over the screen on the coffee table and saw a digital newspaper article featuring the photograph of a beautiful redhead wearing glasses, maybe twenty-two years old.
The headline read:
"Librarian Martha McLoud Disappears Without a Trace."
The next image showed a circular library almost identical to the one Annia had in her mansion.
Evangelina stepped out of the bathroom and immediately came straight into my arms. I stood up and held her tenderly while she cried for several long minutes. Bruce sat back down at the computer and started browsing a website about airplanes.
When Evangelina finally calmed down, she stood in front of her cousin as if perfection were simply unavoidable for her.
Bruce immediately understood and pulled his chair back slightly so she could sit on his lap.
And she did, lowering her magnificent ass onto him before saying to me:
— "I used to spend hours sitting on Bruce, just enjoying being close to him like this..."
Then, noticing how sheer my shirt was, she added:
— "I missed seeing your beautiful little breasts."
Bruce leaned toward her ear and whispered:
— "Show me yours if you want me to grab your hips and move you the way I know you like."
She answered immediately:
— "You don't deserve it."
Then she stood up and said, perfectly echoing my own thoughts:
— "I'm going to check whether Annia is still asleep. This isn't how I imagined spending my last night before risking everything."
Standing between Bruce and me so he couldn't see what she was doing, she unbuttoned another button on my shirt, opening my cleavage slightly wider.
At my confused expression, she whispered:
— "My cousin gets turned on very quickly. Make him suffer for me."
After she closed the door, I went into the kitchen for some water, and Bruce followed behind me.
As I drank from the bottle, he reached toward my shirt and slowly pulled the fabric aside with one finger, leaving one of my breasts nearly exposed.
— "What are you doing?" I asked.
— "Getting used to it," he replied. "Tomorrow we'll have to keep playing this game. Same thing inside the mansion."
Slowly, he exposed the other side too, and because I allowed it, I saw those intense eyes stop focusing on anything except me, almost as if he wanted to burn the image into his memory forever.
I adjusted my shirt as I bent down to put the water away, and I felt him lift the back of it, leaving me exposed to him.
Then I heard his breathing grow ragged and retreat. By the time I straightened up, he was already back in the living room.
Of course I liked it, friend, but that was when I remembered I wasn't wearing any underwear beneath the shirt because I'd gone to bed straight after my bath.
And suddenly, I felt embarrassed.
I walked past him again. He was sitting in front of his laptop now, pretending not to notice me.
— "Get some rest," I told him.
Then I heard him whisper:
— "Don't go."
I stopped and asked what he needed, but he didn't answer. He simply held out his hand.
I walked closer and froze when he once again used his finger to open my shirt.
I let him look at me.
I can't explain how much he turned me on because, without saying a single word, he lifted the shirt higher to look at me from the front, and driven entirely by instinct, I slowly parted my legs.
— "I think that's enough for tonight," I whispered.
But the truth was that I didn't want to leave.
I didn't want my last night to end like this.
Different photos of him from around the world started appearing across the laptop screen. In one of them, he looked very young and seemed to be somewhere in the Middle East, dressed in a long black shearling coat.
— "Is that you?" I asked.
He immediately recognized the opportunity and replied:
— "Do you want to look through them? I can tell you the stories behind some of the photos."
Then he pulled the chair back exactly the way he had done earlier for Evangelina.
I tried to drag another chair closer to the screen, but he stopped me.
— "No, no. That would be a fatal mistake, don't you think? It would reveal that there's no trust between us."
Then he grabbed me by the hips, pulled me onto his lap, and ordered:
— "Move back a little more. Right in the middle."