The Heartbeat Thief by AJ Krafton, Ash Krafton Read Free Book Online Page B

deep, mellow tones seeped into her, tickling her insides. She exhaled and closed her eyes. That voice. She knew it. The stranger from the ball.
    She didn’t turn to look at him. His presence was like a dense mist, tenuous yet flowing, something she felt along her skin. She didn’t need to look at him—although they did not touch, she knew right where he was. That sense of perpetual nearness was something she recognized even for all his strangeness.
    She knew him. Didn’t know why, or how. And she didn’t care. It was simply what was.
    She pinched her lips together and turned toward the house. Even at this distance, she could see inside. A woman near the body bent in grief, clutching a handkerchief to her mouth, her husband supporting her with an arm around her shoulder.
    “Doesn’t it frighten everyone?” It should have made her uncomfortable, speaking to a man to whom she’d never been properly introduced. Protocol and propriety were the legs upon which her mother stood and Senza had been a captive student. Yet, she sensed the rules didn’t apply to him, even if she didn’t understand why. “Dying—in such a sudden way.”
    “Ah, it’s not the suddenness, or the surprise, or even the shock.” His voice was dark and smooth, like the creamy caramel sweets her father often brought home from his trips. “It’s the brick wall at the end of the road of life. You don’t like the ending, no matter how it comes.”
    She tilted her head, just enough that she could capture his dark silhouette in her periphery. “No. I don’t like the ending.”
    He drifted closer, hovering just over her shoulder, like an umbrella. “Why would you, Senza Fyne? Your beauty, faded? Your charms, withered? Your friends and admirers, all gone away? You’ll die alone, bien-aimé . Everyone dies alone.”
    She tugged her shawl tighter about her shoulders, unable to warm herself against the sudden chill. The woven wool did little to comfort, because the chill came from deep inside. “Don’t say that.”
    “But it is truth. Oh, if only there was a way to avoid all that.”
    “No one lives forever.” She hugged her ribs, her shawl in a white-knuckled grip.
    “Do they not?”
    His voice held such a curious tone, a tease in the words that caught her attention. The tease implied a familiarity with her, one that made her feel as if she were doing something wrong. She called up the image of the vicar, his comforting sermon-like words, the beacon of all things good and proper. “In the afterlife, yes.”
    “In this life.”
    She pivoted on her heel, craning her neck and locking her gaze with his. Tall, he was, at least six feet and properly broad-shouldered beneath his somber coat. A thin coal ribbon fastened his collar, a romantic look favored by the young men of society. Felicity’s young man had often sported the same.
    Felicity. The quick-fire brush against the girl’s memory stirred the murky depths of her grief. It washed over her, and she blinked back the tears that never altogether went away.
    His own dark eyes glittered, stark contrast to his pale skin, and a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. Cocksure. Seductive. Bold.
    Senza backed away and turned, wanting to hide from his eyes, lest his sentiments call out sympathetic ones of her own. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. “Why would you say such things, here? It’s not proper.”
    “Where better to admit the truth than at a funeral?” He stole behind her, trailing his finger along her shoulders. “In this place, life meets death. They stare each other in the face. The only difference between them is that the dead no longer care.”
    He drew back, his sudden withdrawal leaving a cold mist on her skin. “The only question that remains is…do you still care, bien-aimé ?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Of course, I still care.”
    “Then,” he said, his voice deepening into a throaty chuckle. “Don’t die.”
    Of all the nerve—
    She turned to admonish him for