Petra breathed deeply. He expected her to lash out at him as she had in the past, but she didn’t. Instead, she grabbed one of his hands and forced him to redistribute his weight as she laid it flat on the soft flesh above her heart. It beat slow and steady under his palm.
“Silas, I want to make a deal with you.”
The muscles along his spine locked, one by one.Here it comes.“What do you want?”
“It’s not about something I want,” she replied, calm in the face of his snarling. “This is for you. I want to make a deal with you so you always know I’m being honest. I think you have trouble reading people. This way you can know for sure that I’m telling the truth — as long as you trust me.”
A little of the starch left his spine. The animal in him paced, uneasy but desperate, as he tried to read her expression and failed. “Explain.”
“I can’t promise I’ll always say everything I’m thinking right away, or that I won’t hide things. I’ve lived both a very bad and very good life, Silas, and that’s made me into a liar even when I don’t want to be.” Her hands tightened around his wrist. “But I think we can both use a— a code for when we need the truth from each other. If you promise to not abuse it, then whenever you put your hand on my heart, I’ll be honest with you. No exceptions. If you do the same…”
It took him a moment to grasp what she was offering him.
If he agreed to reciprocate, if he could trust her, then she would give him the key to all those shadowy parts of her he was so desperate to see.
All he had to do was rein in his natural urge to ruthlessly exploit it.Easy.
“Deal.” He didn’t waste a moment. Keeping his palm pressed against her chest, he demanded, “What are you hiding?”
A bubble of laughter escaped the plush cushion of her mouth. “Nothing,” she answered, heartbeat still steady under his palm. “Seriously, Silas, I have nothing to hide anymore. I’m not planning anything. My life is over. I have nothing— nooneelse. I woke up and I just…” The blue of her eyes, aquamarine in the late morning light, glittered with something warm and vital to his continued existence. “I was just happy to be alive and with you. I feel safe when you hold me. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
Silas didn’t like being humbled. It happened rarely enough that it typically wasn’t an issue for him, but there was apparently no avoiding it with Petra. While her heart beat an easy rhythm,hishad begun to pound. Blood rushed in his ears. His stomach went tight and twisty.
“Honest?” he rasped, suddenly back to being a boy again, when he tried so hard to make sense of a world of emotion and connection that seemed forever out of reach.
Petra didn’t give him an odd or impatient look. She simply nodded once, her gaze locked with his, and answered, “Honest.”
His first impulse was to immediately demand all the other answers he craved. A heady sense of power threatened to overtake him, bigger and more intoxicating than what he felt when he had her on her knees or screaming for him on a sacred altar.
This was a different sort of power, and though his natural inclination was to exploit it without mercy, some deeper instinct stayed his hand.
You’ll get what you want,that instinct promised.This is the start. Ruin it and you’ll never get everything you need from her.
His second impulse was, of course, to spread her legs and drive himself so deeply into her cunt she would feel him all the way in her ribs, but that, too, was dangerous. For one thing, he was absolutely certain that any sexual contact between them now would set off his rut like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite. For another, he couldn’t get his father’s warning out of his head.
I already failed her once. I can’t do it again. I can’t hurt her.
Not like that, anyway. There were good hurts and bad hurts. The only kind he could stomach giving to Petra were the sort that would make her go all wet and soft for him.
Not used to restraining himself, Silas bit back a curse and dropped his head to bury his face against her throat. His hand ventured down for a harsh, proprietary squeeze of her heavy breast, but it was a small concession to the monster of his lust.
“You’re happy?” he demanded, pressing his face into the bit of his soul she wore around her graceful throat. That piece, just like the rest of him, belonged to her now.
“With my life? No.” A soft hand threaded through his hair before finding its place around the curve of one horn. Her voice took on a wry note when she added, “But with you? I know I must have lost my mind because… yeah, I think I am.”
It was by an unspoken agreement that they didn’t speak about anything of importance for the rest of the morning. Having her all to himself, healthy and curiously happy, helped settle his hormones into a temporary lull, allowing him to think clearly for a while as they huddled under the sheets.
Once hunger drove them out of bed, they quietly worked side by side in the kitchen to assemble breakfast. Silas knew that Petra had questions, especially when she eyed the refrigerator newly filled with mismatched containers of meals ready to carry them through the next few weeks. But she didn’t remark on it. Instead, she found the cheese in the crisper and quietly shut the door.
Simply having her there, standing beside him dressed in nothing more than his old t-shirt and a pair of his socks that were so big on her they had to be folded at mid-calf, filled him with an intense wave of satisfaction.
He made coffee and toast — the bread courtesy of his younger cousin Shelley, no doubt, who owned the bakery in town — while Petra scrambled eggs with butter in a pan. She warned, “I’m not a very good cook. Never really had the chance to learn, but I can do scrambled eggs.”
“Most of my childhood punishments involved being banished to Papaw’s kitchen,” he told her, “so I can handle the cooking.”
It satisfied something else in him, too, to know he’d be feeding her. What normally was significant for clan life — sharing meals — was given even more importance knowing that something in Petra’s past made her sensitive about food. He didn’t understand how to connect with her emotionally and he was probably going to be a shit mate, but he could at least always make sure she was fed well.
As they worked around the kitchen and enjoyed their meal, they spoke sporadically about nothing. Petra asked him about his house —previously belonged to his great-grandfather— and about how many people were in his clan —a lot— as well as how much time he spent there —not much.
