He’d never been touched so much in his life. Outside of torture, of course.
Sloane hadn’t been able to suck in a full breath since they left. He’d barely been able to focus on anything other than wherever their bodies brushed. A strange sort of static filled his mind whenever they touched, and when she took his hand…
Desire, he discovered, felt a lot like pain.
It was sharp and bright and relentless. It consumed him in the way pain tried to. The difference was that he’d been trained from childhood to ignore pain, to the point that even in its most severe, life-threatening forms it was hardly more than background noise.
He had no such defense against his need for Cecilia.
The rubber and metal of the bike’s handlebars bent beneath his powerful grip as he fought for some tiny shred of control. It’d taken nearly everything he had to sit calmly with her pressed against him for so long, and then to deny her when she so earnestly wished to share a meal with him had almost pushed him to his breaking point.
It was unnatural to deny his consort anything. Instinct balked at the idea and outright rebelled at his continued insistence on denying himself the Pull.
His skin didn’t fit right. His focus shattered. His world narrowed to the smallest points — those places where her delicate hands touched him. It was torture unlike anything he’d trained for, and it was the best he’d ever felt in his entire existence.
Sloane parked the bike beside one of his cars and dropped the kickstand. When he cut the engine, the world seemed too quiet. Only his labored breathing echoed inside his helmet. It’d never felt like a cage before, but the familiar padding and protective glass had become a slowly tightening scold’s bridle.
He expected Cecilia to hop off the bike as soon as possible, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat back and unwound her arms from his middle. The sound of fabric and hair rustling made his already over-taxed heart clench.
Her helmet fell to the ground with a smallthwackof fiberglass on concrete. The blade of desire cut impossibly deeper when she slipped her arms back around his waist.
“Thanks for the ride. And the date,” she whispered, pressing her soft cheek between his shoulder blades.
Within the confines of his helmet, his voice was a strangled thing. “It was satisfactory?”
“Very.” Her hands wandered upward, across the flat of his stomach, until they reached his chest. It was impossible to hide the way his heart pounded. Even through his undershirt andarmored outer layer, it must’ve hammered at her palms in a desperate rhythm:I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.
Neither of them spoke. For a while, he only heard his own breathing and the ticking of the cooling engine. He didn’t dare move a muscle, afraid that she’d change her mind about touching him or that he’d somehow scare her off. His fingers didn’t unclench from the handle bars and his eyes stayed fixed on the gray wall ahead of him, unblinking.
“Why didn’t you ask me out before? Or even just talk to me? I want a real answer this time.”
A strange noise came from his throat — almost a whine. “I didn’t know how.”And I didn’t dare risk it.
If she’d run, or if she reported him, or if she’d just… hated him, Sloane couldn’t have handled it. Protecting her was his first priority, and any of those possible outcomes would’ve posed a threat to his duty.
Cecilia’s arms tightened, not because they were taking a turn but because she washugginghim. Another first.
“You were afraid,” she surmised, a note of wonder in that soft voice.
Sloane forced himself to blink. His eyes burned when he replied, “I don’t feel fear.”
“Who told you that?”
“My trainers,” he answered, throat tight.
Cecilia was quiet for a moment. “Someone made you this way, didn’t they? You were taught to be… what you are.”
It’s too soon,he thought, chest seizing.She can’t know yet. If she knows, she’ll demand to leave.
But his doe was smart. Of course she’d picked up on the fact that he wasn’t normal, and that whatever he did for Patrol, he wasn’t like all the other officers she might’ve encountered. He’d read her academic record, dug up all her papers on childpsychology and behavioral development. Her putting the pieces together that he wasn’t quite right was an inevitability.
Panic gripped him, but he was incapable of lying to her. “Yes.”
“It’s not normal elvish stuff,” she guessed.
Defeat was another horrible, unfamiliar sensation. Sloane dipped his chin under the weight of it. “No.”
A note he couldn’t easily identify entered her voice when she asked, “You don’t know how to do any of this, do you? Not just dating. I mean normal life stuff like conversation, having fun, touching. That’s why you didn’t know how to talk to me before. You were scared of… I don’t know. Putting me off or frightening me. Or maybe even your own feelings. Am I right?”
