Cassian turned her onto her back in one swift motion.
Cixi lay beneath him, dishevelled and wrecked. Her hair spilled across the pillow. Few golden strands of her hair were clinging to her flushed cheeks and the damp corners of her mouth. Her skin were painted with crimson hue from her jaw to her collarbones. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, unfocused, as if someone had pulled her halfway out of a dream and left her stranded between consciousness and surrender.
She looked up at him. Her gaze drifted from his eyes to his mouth, and it stayed there.
That mouth.
The memory of Terrace resurfaced before she could find a way to stop it. The night on the terrace. His blood on her hands and his lips on hers and the terrifying realisation that her heart had just been rearranged by a man who was taking his last breath.
