The Devil's Favourite Obsession

She felt every emotion and every touch, even in her ghostly form. He was ravishing her lips like there was no tomorrow, making her feel lose her sanity. Why did it feel like he wasn’t afraid of death at all?

His fingers loosened in her hair. His hand slid from the nape of her neck, trailing down her throat, his bloodied fingertips leaving a smear of red along her translucent skin.

His hand fell to the concrete beside him.

When Cixi opened her eyes, Cassian was looking at her. His dark eye was half-lidded and dimming; it held something she had never seen in them before. Something that looked like the last light in a window before someone turns it off.

His lips curved. ”Not bad, Sweetheart,” he whispered, ”For a first kiss.”

She felt every emotion and every touch, even in her ghostly form. He was ravishing her lips like there was no tomorrow, making her feel lose her sanity. Why did it feel like he wasn’t afraid of death at all?

His fingers loosened in her hair. His hand slid from the nape of her neck, trailing down her throat, his bloodied fingertips leaving a smear of red along her translucent skin.

His hand fell to the concrete beside him.

When Cixi opened her eyes, Cassian was looking at her. His dark eye was half-lidded and dimming; it held something she had never seen in them before. Something that looked like the last light in a window before someone turns it off.

His lips curved. ”Not bad, Sweetheart,” he whispered, ”For a first kiss.”

Then he closed his eyes.

He closed his eyes, letting his body settle against the concrete, surrendering to his last breath.

Cixi could only watch as Cassian, without a single fight, surrendered himself to death. She saw how his chest, once swelling with life, was gradually fading. How the rooftop fell silent in the absence of his brash persona.

She did not move, kept staring at Cassian while her lips still burned. They burned the way skin burns after touching something too hot, an afterimage of sensation that does not fade.

She could still feel the exact shape of his mouth against hers.

The drag of his lip. The graze of his teeth. The slow, searing path of his tongue.

She pressed her fingertips to her swollen lower lip, pulled them away, and found them stained red. She could not tell which blood was his and which was hers, and the ambiguity of it made her chest constrict with something she could not name and did not have the courage to examine.

A single tear slid from her left eye.

She sat there, on a rooftop that smelled of iron and smoke and endings, with the taste of a devil dissolving on her tongue. She did not know if what she felt was grief or fear or loneliness.... or something that tasted like a beginning dressed in the clothes of an end.

*

*

*

The force slammed Cixi’s soul back into her body.

She gasped, bolting upright on the mattress.

Her chest heaved. Her eyes were wet before they had even opened. When she blinked, two tears rolled down her cheeks without permission.

She checked on Melisha to see if her movements disturbed her sleep. Contentedly, Melisha stirred briefly in her bed and then went still, breathing slowly and steadily.

Only then did Cixi let out a soft sigh of relief, but a sense of discomfort still lingered in her chest.

She felt a constricting tightness, as if someone was pressing something against her ribs, making it harder to breathe.

In a flash, Cassian’s face, stained with blood, rushed back into her memory, and the pain became intolerable. She rubbed her chest to feel better, only to fail miserably.

When she closed her eyes in pain, the dread silence that followed Cassian once he closed his eyes enveloped her once more, remembering how his wicked dark eyes dimmed like someone turning off a lamp, slowly, and then all at once.

Before she knew it, tears fell like raindrops from the sky. She could find no logical explanation for the recurrence of this emptiness.

Cixi pressed her hand against her mouth to stifle the sob that was building in her throat. When her fingers brushed against her lips, a sharp sting shot through her lower lip.

She pulled her hand away, disbelievingly staring at her fingers which were stained with blood.

Swiftly and decisively, she slipped out from under the blanket and tiptoed to the bathroom, locking the door behind her, and flicked the light on before she leaned toward the mirror.

There it was. A small, unsoiled bite mark Cassian had left on her lower lip in her ghost form. On a rooftop, miles away from this apartment.

The wound had followed her back to the physical plane, sending her thoughts into a chaotic storm.

How was that possible?

Or was it part of the curse that if her soul got hurt, her body would be hurt too?

She kept thinking of many answers that could make sense to her. But was there any logical explanation when it came to her life and curse?

It seemed the curse brought something new into her life every day. Depending on her situation, each outcome would either add to her trouble or not. Depending on her situation, each outcome would either add to her trouble or not.

Her situation was getting murkier than ever.

How was she supposed to go on with her life when her brain hadn’t even comprehended the fact that Cassian had taken his last breath right in front of her, and now the wound given by Cassian had appeared on her lip as if he had marked her soul?

Her first kiss.

Her first kiss with a man who took his last breath while kissing her...

And something inside her chest cracked, like ice splitting beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

The tears came again, and her reflection blurred in the mirror as her eyes filled and overflowed.

She did not even know why she was crying. But she was. And she felt suffocated.

Cassian was cruel. He was dangerous. He kept breaking his promises. Even though she didn’t trust him, she trusted him. Does that even make sense?

She gripped the edge of the sink and let her head hang forward because she did not want to watch herself cry over a man who had stolen her clothes, threatened her with a dungeon, and kissed her like she was the last thing worth tasting in the world.

She hated him. And if he magically came back alive, she would make him pay for all his false words.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked at herself again in the mirror.

Her gaze drifted upward to her hair, which fell over her shoulders to her hips in a single braid in its usual golden blonde.

She ran her fingers through it softly, watching the strands slip between them.

It’s gold and not platinum.

Does her hair turn platinum in ghost form, or was he fooling with her again? She couldn’t tell, and probably Reaper can give her that answer, whether it was false or not.

Turning on the tap, cold water gushed out, and she splashed cold water on her face several times before she pressed a towel against her eyes and held it there until the urge to cry passed.

She walked to the kitchen and drank two full glasses of water from the tap. Only after getting hold of her overwhelming emotions, she returned to the mattress.

She opened her phone and nervously searched for any news on Cassian, the rooftop kill, or any subject related to it. There was no mention of the acting president of Crowns Hotel or heir of the crown family or anything related to him, or if he miraculously survived.

When she found nothing, she locked her phone, kept it aside and tried to sleep again.

Every time she closed her eyes, the kiss returned, not as a memory but as a lingering sensation which refused to leave.

She felt doomed, involuntarily recalling the way his lips brushed against hers, flavoured with smoke and metal, and how the hunger in his kiss had tattered her. She could still sense him on her lips.

Heat rose to her cheeks, turning them red.

She turned onto her side. The kiss replayed.

She turned onto her back. It replayed again.

The warmth of his hand gripping the back of her neck. The way his fingers loosened at the end, sliding down her throat, leaving a trail of blood on her skin like a goodbye written in red.