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She painted his dreams in shades of bronze and copper.
Skin like caramel sundaes and hair like chocolate. Eyes the shape and colour of scorched almonds. Peaches and cream cheeks, strawberry mouth. Sweeter than maple syrup, as bittersweet as treacle. All the things that he enjoyed, but – ultimately – didn’t need.
Vampires don’t need chocolate or syrup.
Just blood. It’s the only thing Angel needed.
And that was the only part of her he couldn’t – shouldn’t – have.
There’s this thing. This thing where every night she told herself to stop, but didn’t. Told herself she had no choice, and that it would end badly. And she chose to end every night in ecstasy… kidding herself that one more night of bad choices wouldn’t hurt any more than the dozen before.
But every night was worse than the last.
Every morning her heart broke, when the sun crept over his bed and she stretched languidly in the warmth… while he leaped away from the light against his skin.
Caramel and cream… they went together, right? Two things so different could still work, right?
So why was Cordelia Chase so afraid every time Angel’s fingers raked her back? Why was she afraid of the man… vampire … she believed to be her soulmate?
It was one of those dark, damp, sweet moments in the early hours of the morning. Where time and place didn’t matter, because the only two people were them, because they were the only people in the world. That’s when his voice rolled, warm and sleep-softened, into her ear, tickling it.
“When the prophecy… when it… Shanshu…” he was stuttering. Dork.
“Angel…?”
“Cordelia, marry me.”
“How could I say no?”
A ring on her finger. A flutter in her chest. A dress in her closet and a smile gracing her lips… Cordelia could all too easily forget what she was afraid of.
The stings in the night.
The tiny, unmentionable scars on her neck.
The crucifix burned into his chest by another girl, in another decade, but permanent.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that she woke up hurting, because she loved him.
She loved his stupid hair, she loved him being a stupid goof.
She loved his vampiric face and his human one.
She loved his icy touch on her heated skin.
The regrets didn’t have to be there. She didn’t need children, she didn’t need a husband who aged with her. She didn’t need an outdoor wedding in the summer.
She needed her Angel.
Right?
…
Right?
How could he do this to her… how? Take a beautiful, human, soulful girl and force her to hide in his darkness… he’d done it before. Time and time again.
But never to someone who had as much light in her as Cordelia Chase did.
And yet on their wedding night he’d whispered sweet nothings into her ear and promised her a forever.
What kind of forever could he give a girl who couldn’t outlive him?
It was another dark, damp, sweet moment in the early hours of the morning. Time and place didn’t matter… because now there would be forever to find the hours and the cities.
Because with fangs in her neck, and an open wound on Angel’s chest, Cordelia knew this wasn’t just another beautiful night with her husband.
It was the start of a forever.
A beautiful one.
Angel. Cordelia. Forever.
The blood drained and drained, she felt her head growing heavy, everything blurred. He pressed her lips to his chest and she drank deeply, a desperate bid for life.
There was a spark.
Deep, so deep… and then something was gone.
His Cordelia was cold.
There was no sunlight. Just dark eyes and molten skin. Just a blood-stained mouth and blood-lusting eyes.
Not Cordelia.
And in one swift motion, she was a pile of dust beneath him.
Nothing.
There are no forevers, not for demons.
There are just eternities.
Alone.