Free Forget About Midnight by Trina M Lee

tell if it was real or a memory. Separation had never been good for us, even before we found one another. It was starting to eat at me. Eventually, it would drive me crazier than the bloodlust ever could. I knew. I’d seen it happen to someone else.
    Being apart was going to break both Arys and I down. I could feel it already, threatening to take everything that was left of me until there was only him.
    “What are you thinking?” Kale asked. He was pressed against me, a leg thrown over one of mine and an arm around my waist. He kissed my shoulder, but his gaze was on me. “You’re frowning.”
    “I guess it’s a good thing I can’t get wrinkles now, huh?” I quipped, stroking a hand up and down his thigh. Touching him so freely was surreal. The strange tension between us was still there, lurking in the background, waiting for a chance to shatter our fragile state of comfort.
    “It’s ok to miss him, Alexa. I’m not delusional enough to believe I’m the one for you. I know how this is supposed to play out. And I’m ok with that. Just being here with you now is enough.”
    Kale’s declaration sliced through me like a dagger. Feeling like I’d just been stabbed, I turned my face away so he couldn’t see the blood tears I blinked back. Inwardly I cursed my emotions for being on overdrive. I could go from a torrent of tears to a maniacal rage in a split second. It was frustrating to have such little control over myself.
    I turned back to face him, hoping like hell that he couldn’t see the anguish I stuffed down inside me. “I’m not going to lie. It’s hard for me without him. But don’t for a minute think that you don’t mean the world to me.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, looking ashamed. “I shouldn’t have said that. This really isn’t the time or place.”
    “No, it’s fine. You should say whatever you feel.” I ran my fingers through his hair and down the side of his face. I could stare into those amazing eyes for days and still find them fascinating. “Anything we bring to this room stays in this room.”
    “I just don’t want to make this harder on you by saying shit like that. I sound like a bad Hollywood movie.”
    “So you mean every Hollywood movie then.” I gave him a playful nudge, happy when I got a small chuckle out of him.
    The sound of a cold autumn rain beat against the covered window. It was the perfect background noise for a day in bed with a forbidden lover. It did kind of feel like a movie. Not a bad one though. Just a sad one about a bittersweet love affair between two people who could only hurt each other.
    The bedside lamp bathed us in its warm glow. I watched him, captivated by the way the light and shadow played over Kale as he sprawled next to me. Every time I thought I was spent, I craved more of him.
    He dragged a hand over my stomach, tracing lazy circles around my navel. As bad as we might have been together, I felt safe with him. If only I could hide away there in his bed forever.
    “Do you ever miss your wolf, Kale?” I asked, knowing this might be my only chance to ask him about it. “I can’t even feel it inside you. When I read that in Veryl’s file about you, it blew my mind. It still does.”
    “For the first few decades I did kind of miss it, although I’d never really enjoyed being a werewolf anyway. After a while, I stopped feeling it. I never missed it again until I met you.” He paused as if thinking back all those centuries. “I was never really cut out for being a wolf. Not like you are.”
    He told me about becoming a wolf, how the military that served the existing English monarch at the time forced him into it for an operation so long ago. That had led him straight into the arms of a vampiress with a serious case of the crazies. I hated hearing about Eva. I hated her for what she’d made him. And then I hated myself for being so much like her, unable to let him go but unable to love him the way he deserved. She and I were not so