*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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Cupid and I stare at each other.
The space between our bodies feels infinite. His tall, lean body is harder than usual, as though he's struggling to contain something within. There's a darkness behind his eyes; a darkness I've caught glimpses of in the past – when I first met him, when we faced Venus, when he thought Valentine had hurt me that first time in the gym.
But I've never seen it so plain on his face.
Not when looking at me.
He raises an eyebrow. "Well? When was the first time you spoke to him?"
I force myself to hold his gaze – though something inside me wants to turn my back, to run. To escape.
"Before the party," I say.
His jaw clenches and he swallows hard. His eyes don't move from mine. "That's when you asked him to look for the soul? Before the party?"
I pause. My body feels cold – as though his icy glare is slowly freezing the blood that pounds through my veins.
No. I asked him in Mino's kitchen – when he stood, body close, hands curled around mine as I held a knife to his chest. When he told me he had given me something. When he said we'd shared a moment in the cave.
I don't know whether telling Cupid the truth will make things better or worse.
"I..." I close my eyes momentarily, shielding myself from Cupid's stormy gaze. I release a breath. "No. He visited me again. When I was at Mino's."
"Right. And, maybe it's none of my business, but have you had any other private chats with the guy who has repeatedly tried to ruin my life?" His words are icy, filled with disdain. "Spent any more alone time with my brother?!"
"No....no... Just three times."
A bitter laugh escapes his lips that doesn't meet his eye. "Just the three. Well that's OK then – because if there'd been a fourth I'd have been really mad...."
He looks away from me – staring at the glass wall of one of the Sim booths. His breathing deepens – his chest rising and falling with each ragged breath, his damp black top clinging to his flat torso. He looks like he's trying to get a control over himself, his emotion, his anger.
I've never seen him like this. He's been angry with me before – when Valentine tricked me into meeting him that first time in the gym. But that was a hot, fiery anger. Not this. Not cold, and hard, and impersonal.
I want to do something – to take it away the darkness. But I don't know how.
And he doesn't even know the worst of it.
Valentine said it was my feelings for him that brought back Venus.
A dark feeling hollows at my chest like a tornado – scraping at my insides. I think back to the shadowy mass in the center of my labyrinth.
