Her mouth snapped shut when he reached under his jacket and extracted a sleek black bolt gun. Calmly setting it on the table between them, grip angled toward her, he leaned back into his seat and crossed one ankle over his knee.
Felix spread his arms over the back of the couch and dropped the mask — for good this time.
“You shouldn’t have been at the bar that night,” he said, voice flat and hard. “But fine. You didn’t know what I had planned. That’s not your fault. That was a miscalculation on my part and one I won’t be making again. But you know what Ican’taccept, Dahlia?”
He was impressed by the way she kept her gaze away from the gun. A weaker person wouldn’t have been able to keep from looking at it, sitting there like a bomb about to go off on the antique coffee table. Not his girl. She held his gaze, her expression tense and her lips thinned. Afraid, maybe, but too damn proud to back down.
It was inconceivable that he’d ever let some worthless fuck have her. Another vampire would try and break that spirit. All Felix wanted to do was make it stronger. He always had, from the moment they locked eyes in that bar.
When she said nothing, he smiled with too much fang. “You didn’t tell me you’d been hurt. I should’ve been your first fucking call. Not Cecilia. Not your mother. Me.”
Speaking through her teeth, she said, “You’re not my boyfriend, Felix.”
“You’re right. I’m not. I’m your mate. And you didn’t trust me with your care when you needed it most.” At last, the anger bled through the cracks in the ice. It rolled through his voice — all the rage and fear and hurt he barely understood. “You were fuckingimpaled,Dahlia! And then when you started feeling sick, you hid that, too. You know what that tells me?”
There was a vicious undercurrent in her cool reply. “That we’re not dating and never have been, presumably.”
“It tells me that I didn’t properly explain to you how this is gonna be.” He sucked in a sharp breath, trying to calm his temper. It didn’t do shit.
“See, when a vampire finds his anchor, his bride, hismate,what-the-fuck-ever, we don’t do anything halfway. They are the center of our world, Dahlia. We would starve without them, so their care iseverything.Their complete trust that their man will protect and provide for them is essential. It’s written in our DNA.That means that when, say, an anchor hides shit from her vampire, it’s an insult of the highest degree. A declaration that he’s unfit. That he’s unworthy.”
Dahlia sputtered. “You just spent ten minutes telling me all the thingsyouhave been hiding from me! How am I the one in trouble here whenyouset off a bomb inmybar and didn’t bother to tell me?”
“You weren’t supposed to be there!” he snarled, the threads of his control finally snapping. “I never —never! —would’ve put you in danger. Not for any opportunity. Not even to end the war! I would’ve found some other way. I would’ve called it off or told you not to go in. The fact that you even thought I’d?—”
A bitter taste like sour, clotted blood filled his mouth. Felix stood up and paced away, his hands on his hips. He kept his back to her when he finished, “Here’s how this is going to go down. You have two choices, Dahlia. You can accept that it’s you and me, now and for the rest of our fucking lives, or you can take that gun and shoot me in the head.”
“Felix,what?—”
He faced her. Striding back to the couches, he stopped by the corner of the coffee table and stood there, hands still on his hips, his eyes locked with hers. “You heard me. Shoot me. You think I’m unfit to be your mate? You think I can’t care for you or give you what you need? Then there’s only one way you’re getting rid of me, because I’m not walking away.”
When she didn’t move, her expression and body frozen, he lowered himself to his knees in front of her. She made a choked sound of protest when he shoved the gun in her limp hands. Hekept his palms down on the couch cushions, his head up and neck bared. Felix’s lip curled.
“Those are the stakes, pet. That’s how serious this shit is. You either grab that gun and put me down, or you start trusting me. Your call.”
It was harsh. He knew it was. But he also knew his girl. Sexual torture wouldn’t work, and locking her up like an unruly toddler would just piss her off.
No, the only thing Dahlia had ever responded to was power. True, raw power. And there was nothing more true or more raw than putting a gun in her hand and letting her decide what happened next.
What he loved most about his girl was the fact that he genuinely didn’t know what she’d choose. He wagered there was a fifty-fifty chance she took him up on the offer.
“What’s it gonna be, pet?”
Her fingers curled loosely around the grip, but they didn’t stray toward the trigger. “I… I don’t want tokillyou!”
“It’s not about wanting. If you really think you’ll never trust me, if youreallydon’t want to be here, then that’s the only option. I’m not going away. I’ve proved that again and again. You want to be single? You want to be with another person? Someone is going to have to shoot me, because I’m not letting that shit happen while I’m still breathing.”
“Felix, this is dramatic even for you.” A hysterical edge had entered her voice.
Good,he thought.She’s starting to get it.
“It’s the truth.” He placed his hands on her knees and slowly pried them apart. Her robe slipped away, revealing soft thighs and a stomach that trembled with every frantic breath.
Felix held her stare as he lowered himself down to her soft pink center. The scent of her arousal perfumed every breath even as she made those little sounds of outrage.
“Are you kidding me? You give me a gun, tell me to shoot you, and now you want to go down on me?”
He pressed his lips to the soft curve just below her belly button, his eyes closing. The gun hovered over his head, locked in her frozen hand. “Can’t a man enjoy his last meal?”
