Aimee
I used to obsess over the Dark Angels. I collected their photos, analyzed their interviews, pored over every detail of their perfectly crafted image. But watching them film their reality show at their mansion, I discover a dark reality.
The cameras capture their flawless skin and seductive smiles, but not what I see—the way five predators move with grace among humans while pretending to be nothing more than K-pop idols.
Then the vision hits me like lightning, and suddenly I’m scrawling prophecies I don’t understand.
When I look up, all five Dark Angels are surrounding me, their beauty as deadly as their secret. But it’s Cage—the Porcelain Prince, my bias—who reaches for my hand.
***
Aimee
To be perfectly honest, before I met Cage Knox, I’d entrained the possibility that he might be gay. His beauty is androgynous, with an angular, masculine bone structure that would make a god jealous, but he also has the smooth skin of a nymph, and the most kissable lips that ever existed. His looks and his stage style make his sexuality hard to determine. Fact is, he has as many fanboys as fangirls, and RockOn Entertainment banks on that big time.
On that, and his unique voice.
Cage’s voice is masculine when he speaks, but when he sings, it’s mesmerizing and seductive. Team all that up with his body, which is a work of art in itself, and you have a cocktail no human can resist. He looks just as good in form-fitting stage attire as he does in the designer suits he wears at fashion events for labels who pay fortunes, which drives both men and women wild.
I still don’t know what hit me. I still can’t believe I’m here, at the house he shares with the other Angels and his closest staff, privy to their behind-the-scenes life.
They’re shooting some kind of reality show right now, and I’ve slipped onto the first floor landing to watch. It’s fascinating how these kinds of videos are made, the same kinds I used to fangirl over with Louise. The Dark Angels have been on the market for a decade, so we all basically grew up with them, which involved a lot of fantasizing and lusting. There was a time when I obsessed over Cage’s sexuality, investigating online. And when that didn’t deliver a clear answer, I resorted to researching people’s opinions, which were always split fifty-fifty, and which plunged me into a vicious circle of self-inflicted torture.
Now I realize that all that uncertainty was carefully engineered. What looks spontaneous is heavily scripted. Cameras are always rolling in their house, mics in the air, the hair and make-up team at the ready, and bustling with activity when the time comes.
I lower myself onto the floor and grip the banister bars, watching the five vampires put on a reality show in the sunlight—which they clearly don’t burn away from. I wonder how many other myths will be busted during my stay with them.
Vampires. Will I ever get used to the idea that they exist? I’m sure as fuck still losing sleep over it, staying up at night with the covers pulled up to my eyes, and expecting the door to creak open, Cage sliding in like the mist. I guess it’s what I get for reading too many vampire books.
If I’m completely honest, I was actually hoping that he’d come visit me, but it seems he’s lost all interest now that I’m here. We barely talked to each other at all since that plane landed. Maybe keeping me monitored was all he cared about, but my need for answers grew bigger with every day I didn’t get them. The ‘Assistant’ on the phone Verona gave me turned out to be a poker-faced young girl who clearly doesn’t like me and speaks the bare minimum, so I couldn’t get more than food, drink, clothes, and basic information out of her.
So, I started investigating on my own, venturing out of my room these past few nights. The place felt eerily empty and, the first time, I got scared and returned to my room. But I didn’t abandon the project, and got further and further every night.
Suddenly, Cage looks up, and we lock eyes. I jerk toward the mug of coffee I left on the floor and pick it up with both hands, just to give myself something to do. Damn it, my heart is pounding so freaking hard.
***