Passion Read Online Free PDF Page A

things Daniel ever told her when she was upset or overwhelmed. She wanted to run to them, to pul Luschka away—but she couldn’t. Something deep inside her would not budge.
    She fixed on Luschka’s expression as if her whole life depended on it.
    Maybe it did.
    Luschka nodded as Dani l spoke, and her face changed from terri ed to calm, almost peaceful. She closed her eyes. She nodded one more Luschka nodded as Dani l spoke, and her face changed from terri ed to calm, almost peaceful. She closed her eyes. She nodded one more time. Then she tipped back her head, and a smile spread slowly across her lips.
    A smile?
    But why? How? It was almost like she knew what was about to happen.
    Dani l held her in his arms and dipped her low. He leaned in for another kiss, pressing his lips rmly against hers, running his hands through her hair, then down her sides, across every inch of her.
    It was so passionate that Luce blushed, so intimate she couldn’t breathe, so gorgeous that she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Not for a second.
    Not even when Luschka screamed.
    And burst into a column of searing white flame.
    The cyclone of ames was otherworldly, uid and almost elegant in a ghastly way, like a long silk scarf twisting around her pale body. It engulfed Luschka, owed out of her and al around her, lighting up the spectacle of her burning limbs ailing, and ailing—and then not ailing anymore. Dani l didn’t let go, not when the re singed his clothes, not when he had to support the ful weight of her slack, unconscious body, not when the flames burned away her flesh with an ugly, acrid hiss, not when her skin began to char and blacken.
    Only when the blaze zzled out—so fast, in the end, like the snu ng of a single candle—and there was nothing left to hold on to, nothing left but ashes, did Dani l drop his arms to his sides.
    In al of Luce’s wildest daydreams about going back and revisiting her past lives, she’d never once imagined this: her own death. The reality was more horrible than her darkest nightmares could ever have concocted. She stood in the cold snow, paralyzed by the vision, her body bereft of the capacity to move.
    Dani l staggered back from the charred mass on the snow and began to weep. The tears streaming down his cheeks made clean tracks through the black soot that was al that was left of her. His face contorted. His hands shook. They looked bare and big and empty to Luce, as if—even though the thought made her oddly jealous—his hands belonged around Luschka’s waist, in her hair, cupping her cheeks. What on earth did you do with your hands when the one thing they wanted to hold was suddenly, gruesomely gone? A whole girl, an entire life—
    gone.
    The pain on his face took hold of Luce’s heart and squeezed, wringing her out completely. On top of al the pain and confusion she felt, seeing his agony was worse.
    This was how he felt every life.
    Every death.
    Over and over and over again.
    Luce had been wrong to imagine that Daniel was sel sh. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was that he cared so much, it wrecked him. She stil hated it, but she suddenly understood his bit erness, his reservations about everything. Miles might very wel love her, but his love was nothing like Daniel’s.
    It never could be.
    “Daniel!” she cried, and left the shadows, racing toward him.
    She wanted to return al the kisses and embraces she’d just witnessed him giving to her past self. She knew it was wrong, that everything was wrong.
    Dani l’s eyes widened. A look of abject horror crossed his face.
    “What is this?” he said slowly. Accusingly. As if he hadn’t just let his Luschka die. As if Luce’s being there was worse than watching Luschka die. He raised his hand, painted black with ash, and pointed at her. “What’s going on?” It was agony to have him look at her this way. She stopped in her tracks and blinked a tear away.
    “Answer him,” someone said, a voice from the shadows. “How did you get