A muscle in his jaw twitched. He paced away from her to the other side of the room and then back. When he looked at her again, his stare held all the force of a freight train.
Reyna tried again. “I meant why are you here in my room in the middle of the night?”
“Vampires enjoy the darkness, Reyna. Did you forget?” He smirked at her, his mask firmly in place. This was the man she had first met at Visage, not her Beckham. Not the man she had gotten to know.
She swallowed back anger at the bite in his tone. This wasn’t what she had pictured. All those times she had dreamed of their reunion, she had envisioned heartfelt words, love and devotion and apologies broken by enough vigorous sex to make up for all those lost weeks. Not crisp conversation and words that danced around the issue.
“You didn’t answer the question,” she pointed out.
“You were sleeping. So, I didn’t wake you,” he said simply.
She suspected that was only part of the truth. Once again, she was left in the dark. She’d thought they had gotten over that, but what the fuck did she know? Clearly, everything had changed.
“I thought you would be here when I was brought back.”
“Did you?”
Was that actual surprise, or was he mocking her? His eyes were empty, blank in his expressionless face. He was stoic and reserved and in control. Perfect control. He had mastered it over the years, and now he was using it onher. She hated it.
“You should have been here.”
He arched an eyebrow. What the hell was he thinking?
“What are you even doing here if you can’t answer a simple question?”
“I am perfectly capable of answering a simple question.”
“Well, where were you?” she ground out.
“Busy.”
Her frustration mounted, and a chasm opened up between them the longer he stalled. If she walked any closer, she’d fall into that bottomless pit forever.
“Busy doing what?”
“Working.”
Her anger overloaded, and she broke. “With Penelope? Are you two back together?”
His nostrils flared, and his eyes hardened. “I don’t want to talk about Penelope.”
“Oh, what else is new?”
Some of his facade slipped away, his own anger finally clear. “You cannot expect everything to be the same now that you’ve returned.”
“You make it sound like Ichoseto leave,” she said, her voice rising. “That I decided to go to Visage and work with Harrington. That this was what I wanted.”
“How could I possibly know if that was true or not?”
Reyna gaped at him. “Because I’m not suicidal!”
“He wouldn’t kill you. He needs you.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Her breathing was uneven as she remembered all the things Harrington had said he would do to her if she didn’t comply. But she didn’t tell him. She hadn’t told anyone.
“You left that night,” Beckham said, reminding her all over again of the night he bit her, when she ran and this nightmare started. “How am I supposed to react now that you’re back?”
