His devilish smile stays tilted against his perfect lips and I’ll admit it’s hard for me to fully pull away from him and roll to my side. He just... he pulls me in. Sucks me into his chaos and I drown in the beauty of it with eyes wide open. So I have to keep these two inches of safe space between us. He turns toward me, both of us staring at each other on the small pillow. One inch. Make that one inch of safety.
“So,” he says conversationally.
It’s clear he has absolutely no idea how to make normal conversation that doesn’t include sarcasm or dick jokes.
My tongue slides across my lower lip and I can still taste his tongue against mine. My cock’s still hard and I’m still thinking about how good he felt.
But I have to stay focused.
“So, tell me something real,” I rasp out, a sound of gravelly lust.
“I don’t hide anything. What you see is what you get.”
“No, you don’t hide anything. Except your emotions. You hide it all behind sarcasm.”
“I do not,” he says with a scoffing laugh. But still, I see all of that denial in the depths of his eyes, even in the darkness.
Yes. Yes he does.
“Your best friend is someone who barely knows what emotions are so maybe he doesn’t question it, but I want to know more than what’s on your dramatised surface.”
“Did you just call me dramatic?”
My eyebrows lift incredibly high but I don’t immediately reply.
“How did you and Phoenix meet?” I ask instead.
Gentle fingers skim along the lines of my stomach and he stares at the shadowed details of my body instead of looking into my eyes. A shiver tingles across my skin but I don’t move an inch. I don’t want to scare him away from whatever it is he’s considering telling me.
“My mom really is a nun,” he finally whispers. “She’s a mortal woman who always tries to make the best of people. Even those who hurt her. Like my father. Like Prods in general. She opened a supernatural shelter. Theonlysupernatural shelter in New York City.”
Wow. Lady’s got some balls, I guess. That confession just has more questions swirling through my mind. Like how does a nun give birth to vampire offspring? I’m almost tempted to ask him but I know it’ll be met with some bullshit reply about when ‘A vampire and a nun love each other very much…’
I can’t with that.
“When Heaven and I were little, she’d force us to volunteer there on the weekends. I hated it. Supernaturals are too proud to ask for help. Too strong. So it wasn’t a very busy place. Hardly anyone was ever there. Except for Phoenix.”
A deep sadness shadows his face even as he refuses to meet my eyes. My stomach tangles and I don’t immediately realize when I slide my fingers through his and he lets me.
“He was something like a shell when I met him. This little boy without family, without friends, without love or even basic emotion.”
Shit, he loves him.
I swallow that thought down, but it hurts to know he has so much more history with Phoenix. I wonder if this is how Izara feels too.
The five of us are a tangled fucking mess.
“I wanted to care for him immediately but my father would never take in someone outside of our Citadel.” A sneering, hateful smile replaces his normal carefree happiness but it passes slowly. “My mother did. She loved Phoenix. Even if he never realized it.”
Shit, why do I want to meet his mom now? That can’t be good.Reign that shit back in for now.
“You love him too,” I whisper and he lifts his daunting gaze at me, piercing me with that look that slices into me slowly.
“Yeah. I do.” It’s a testing sound of defense.
“Does it hurt that he never gave that emotion back to you?”
His hand slips from mine and he rolls to his back, chin tipped up and revealing the dark lines of the cross tattoo that slice like a knife against his throat.
