Her mind replayed the moment, the awful moment when he had first found her, now safe in her room she could see things more clearly. At the time, she had only seen his anger. Anger was a scary thing for a human woman in a world of supernatural creatures. She hadn’t been able to see beyond that and every instinct for self-preservation took over. How did a physically weaker being, who’s only asset was her body, save herself from the wrath of those stronger than her? Temptation.
Sera set her fingers against her lips. Offering herself was the most effective means to diffuse anger. If she caught it at the right moment, before it teetered into violence, the heat would fuel alternative urges, urges she could manage.
She should not have kissed Kieran.
But she did not regret it.
She expected stone and instant rejection. Kieran was predictably rigid… until he wasn’t.
He had kissed her back. Thoroughly. Like he had been fighting the urge to kiss her foryears. There was urgency and need, an almost desperate ache hidden beneath the most searingly passionate kiss she’d ever experienced. She lost herself in the scent of evergreens. The all encompassing cold could not reach her where he held her, where his hands gripped and caressed. The memory alone was thrilling, her heartrate rising to re-live the intensity.
One, tiny fraction of memory soured that fantasy.
Looking back with a clear head, she realized that she hadn’t truly been afraid he would strike her. Which was absurd. The imagining of a naïve child. Maybe she didn’t believe him capable of striking her, but there were other ways to hurt. His words could be as sharp as his eyes, but what was worse, were the flutters in her stomach and the dreamy sighs.
She was in danger of allowing him to hurt her in ways she had not allowed since she was an ignorant eighteen year old on her own for the first time, willing to believe that love was a genuine emotion, instead of a weapon used to ply consent out of her until she was ultimately discarded. Sera had not slipped since that first time, not with her heart. Love, romance, they had no place in sex and pleasure. Not in her world.
“Sera?” Seth’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. She pushed away from the door like it had burst into flame.
“Yes, it’s me. Nothing to fret about. Go back to sleep.” She padded to her side of the room and burrowed into the covers.
“You only sound like that when something’s wrong.” He sat up fully. She could see him faintly from the glow of the fireplace and the lava stone. He rubbed sleep from his eyes as he crossed to sit on the edge of her bed. “Spill. What happened?”
She sat up and hugged her legs to her chest. “I’m just… I’m such an idiot.”
“You need to stop calling yourself that,” he said, frowning. “You’re the smartest person I know, but that’s not the problem here, is it?”
“The problem is that I tried to fix the situation with Cole. I thought if I found what he needed then maybe I could end the threat sooner.”
“Ah. So you went snooping?”
She nodded.
“And you got caught?”
She groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“What did he do? Did he…” Seth paused and she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”
Sera’s head flew up, but she caught herself before the impulse to rise to Kieran’s defense could fly from her mouth. She swallowed and said, “I’m not hurt. He was angry, yes, but nothing more. I mean, he thought I was betraying him even after he’s been nothing but ‘technically’ kind. So, yeah, he was pissed. He wanted to know what I was doing and I panicked.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yep. I threw myself at him. That’s what I do, right? Throw my body at the problem.” She wiped at her eyes, tears brimming for some insane reason. She didn’t waste tears on people, not anymore. She cried enough the first time. She was better than this.
Seth heaved a sigh as he rubbed her back. “How bad was it? Is he as cold as Cole?”
She pursed her lips, looking away from him. “Not in the slightest,” she mumbled.
Kieran was anything but cold, her entire body had been on fire. She had thought for half a second he planned to rip thechemise from her body and take her on the dust covered bed. Nowhere in that fantasy did she worry she would freeze.
“Oh shit!” Seth wiggled in front of her, holding her shoulders with his hands so he could ease her face level with his. Sera refused to meet his eyes. Why was she being such a child? She’d kissed men before, she was no simpering virgin. Yet, she was filled with a giddy sort of excitement that had her blushing as Seth hovered in her face. “You liked it! Wait, it was good? He was good? I would have bet money he’d never kiss you back. Or that it’d feel like, I don’t know, kissing the wall.”
“It was…notlike kissing a wall.”
“Oh fuck. Youreallyliked it.”
She fell backward, sinking into the covers as she threw her arm over her eyes. “Divine above, you have no idea. I’ve kissed a few—”
