*CUPID'S MATCH BOOK 3* FIRST DRAFT
For the third time, follow Lila into a world of cupids, arrows, betrayal, and love, in the Watty award winning series with over 50 million reads online.
CUPID'S MATCH is published and in stores now!
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The oil lamps flicker – casting shadows across the mosaiced floor. The white curtains hanging from the four-poster bed seem to move in a breeze that is not there. My head is pounding. Thoughts and emotions and dreams rage inside my mind – turbulent and relentless. I can barely make any sense of it.
Yet somewhere behind it all I hear a distinct thudding sound.
Th-thump. Th-thump.
And Valentine's eyes hold mine; perfectly still. Neither of us moves.
Something fiery and all-consuming urges through every part of me – like my body can't decide whether it wants to kill the man in front of me. Or do something else entirely.
Hello, Psyche.
Silence stretches.
Th-thump. Th-thump.
His eyes darken as they assess my face, as he ascertains rise and fall of my chest beneath the white cotton T-shirt I wear. He raises his palms. "Let's talk this through before getting. . . violent, my love."
"Don't. Call me. That."
In a split second I cross the space, grabbing the collar of the white linen shirt he's wearing, and ram him into the wall behind. A low sound scrapes from his throat as he makes impact; his pupils almost undetectably widening within their pools of charged electric blue.
"What is going on?!" I say.
He chuckles, but the humor doesn't meet his eyes. "Always so violent."
"Tell me."
I feel his hard chest beneath my knuckles – moving up and down deeply as though he's trying to contain something within his body.
"You shouldn't have opened the box," he says.
"And you shouldn't try my patience any longer."
We stare at each other – eyes locked. Until finally, I take a deep breath and step back, releasing him.
"Explain," I say.
He exhales, running a hand across his jaw. Then brushing down the front of his shirt, he moves past me to sit on the edge of the bed. Any spark of humor has disappeared from his face. I go and perch down beside him – close enough to feel the heat of his body, but not close enough that we're touching. Both of us look straight ahead. His shoulders slump.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," he says – his voice is gravelly, like the words scrape against his throat.
"How was it supposed to happen?"
An oil lamp on the bedside table next to me flicks shadows across his face.
"We were supposed to bring the box to Venus. It was the last of your – of Psyche's – trials. On completing the trials, you would have been rewarded. You would have been made more than mortal. Then you would have been powerful enough to bear the weight of all this." He falls silent – his broad shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry."
