He had to keep her. The question washow.
As Sloane stood there, watching her watch him, he realized that two obstacles stood in his way: Fracture and Cecilia’s fear.
The first could be handled easily enough, but the second… He had no idea how to make someone care for him. No one had before.
Desperate to know where to begin, he demanded, “How do I make you unafraid?”
Cecilia didn’t respond right away. She appeared to weigh something in her mind as she bit her lip.
After a long stretch of quiet, she ordered, “Come here.”
He followed her command instinctively, but he didn’t dare get too close. Every inch between them was vital to keeping his self-control intact. When they began to vanish, the need to ripoff his helmet, to wrap his hands around her waist, to know what it would feel like to press the length of his body against the softness of her was unbearable.
But she wasn’t satisfied with the distance he tried to keep between them.
Cecilia pointed to the floor directly in front of her. “Here.”
Sloane could’ve sworn every nerve in his body came alive. Energy unlike any he’d felt before zinged through his system as he slowly crossed the distance. Suddenly the helmet that had always been a shield between him and the world felt suffocating. The urge to tear it from his head made his breath shorten into sharp pants.
And then she opened her legs.
He didn’t make the choice to step between them. It was the most natural thing in the world to slot himself there.
Sloane didn’t know what it was like to come home, but he imagined it was something like when Cecilia welcomed him into that sacred space.
“I’m terrified of you,” she repeated, softer this time, as her hands sought out his arms.
His breath caught when she gently pulled them out from behind his back. Her fingers trailed down his forearms until they found his gloved hands. Guiding them onto the countertop beside her hips, she caged herself in with his much greater bulk.
Baffled, aroused, and desperate to understand her, he growled, “Then why do you want me closer?”
Those doe eyes stared up at him, knowing and beautiful and full of danger. “Because I’m pretty sure you’ll do whatever I say. And if I say don’t touch me, you won’t.”
It occurred to him that even if he couldn’t inhale her pheromones, his skin was still exposed to them. Perhaps that was why it felt like every inch of him was screaming for her touch.
Pulled in by her gravity, his head bowed until his temple was level with hers. “Is that an order?”
Cecilia’s hands hadn’t left his. Her fingertips hovered over his knuckles before they slid upward over the smooth leather. “Yes,” she answered, finding where the end of his gloves met the beginning of his sleeves.
Being hit with a cattle prod was less shocking than when her fingertips slid beneath his sleeves to touch his bare skin.
“Ah!” Sloane’s whole body stiffened. His claws sank into the countertop as the contact ricocheted through his body and rewrote something in his very cells.
Her touch vanished. “Sorry! Was that?—”
“No,” he gasped, trying to regain some of his composure. “I’m not used to touch. Continue.”
A peculiar note entered her voice when she asked, “Not used to touch? What does that mean?”
“Elves don’t… do that,” he answered, chest tightening with that nameless not-quite-panic feeling. “Not with people who aren’t kin. And I don’t have kin.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Cecilia turned her head away to look closely at his hand. “I’ve never spent any time with elves.”
It wasn’t a surprise. Very few non-elves had. After a thousand years of catastrophic population decline and in-fighting, they were a closed off people. But things were changing now that Theodore Solbourne had taken over for his sister and chosen a witch for his mate. They weren’t confined to their own people anymore.
If he were normal, he could’ve taken Cecilia as his consort proudly. He would’ve been the envy of all, with his perfect, fragile mate who pledged herself to the revered work of teaching young.
The fact that keeping her meant he couldn’t let the entire world know how lucky he was made that angry nerve throb in his chest.
