Embry’s gaze narrowed, pinning me in place. “The two nights you’ve been gone. Banging that girl, right? With the hair?”
I nodded, slowly buying time to calm my racing pulse. “Yup.”
“What’s her name?”
Fuck, I had no idea. I’d stepped on her foot on purpose. So she’d turn and talk to me, and I could flirt with her enough to make my brothers believe we’d hooked up. I forced a sheepish smirk. “I didn’t ask.”
“You fucked a girl for two days without knowing her name?”
“We weren’t fucking the whole time. Man needs sleep too.”
Embry snorted. It was a council joke that I slept even less than Saint. That I kept Dracula hours, watching over my kingdom while the rest of them laid their heads down. Truth was, I didn’t have the fucking time to sleep much. Or the peace to find that magical place where dreams were sweet. So I didn’t bother. I stared at Embry instead, losing myself in his blacker than black hair and high cheekbones. His lean muscles and tattooed skin.
Silence fell over us. Up here, where he felt safe, it was quiet moments like these that he sometimes forgot himself and leaned on me. Dropped his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. Best days of my life, but he wasn’t in the mood right now, I could tell. He drank his tea, then tossed the enamel mug aside, expelling a breath that seemed to echo around the cave.
“I fucked this up.”
I blinked, dazed. “What?”
Embry blurred. Then he was above me, knees planted either side of my hips.Straddlingme.
Fuckingfuckingfuck.
I opened my mouth.
He sealed it shut with his lemon-scented palm. “I lied to you about the murder-free zone. It’s not why I brought you up here that time, or any time after that.”
He’d have surprised me less if he’d hit me. I stared, chest rising and falling too fast, fighting to keep my hands to myself.That’swhere he was going with this? A confession that would break my heart all over again?
I squirmed beneath him, needing air, needingout.
He let his hand slide away. “I wanted you to fuck me up here.”
La hostia. “But—”
“I know. Iknow, okay? I’m a fucking mess. I just—” Embry brought both hands to his head, pressing his palms to his skull, his fingers tangling in his thick hair. “Before I took that blade, every moment I spent with you was something else... I can’t explain it. This thing in my head, I know I’ll never be free of it, but I kept dreaming of that moment, with you, when it would disappear, and we could be together, like you are with all those fucking girls.Fuck.”
His hands moved to cover his face. He dropped his head and the weirdest sensation of distraught privilege washed over me. Embry was all up in everyone else’s business, but no one saw this side of him.
No one but me. “Em.”
“Don’t be nice to me.”
“Why not?”
Embry dropped his hands. He looked tired, but it wasn’t a physical thing. It was soul-deep, and it outgunned me to a man. “I don’t deserve it. And it’s weird. You’re not nice to anyone else.”
I swallowed bile as it bubbled up my throat. “I’m nice to Saint. And Ivy, and she told me I’d better be nice to her dad while we’re away or else, so...”
“You’re a shithead to Rubi.”
A scowl creased my ruined face before I could stop it. Of course, I was a nasty cunt to Rubi. He got to put his arms around Embry without a second fucking thought. To sleep in his bed without worrying he’d pop wood and fuck everything up.
I hate him.
As if. I loved Rubi. He was the protector I’d never had. The big brother Embry deserved. I was just jealous—So. Fucking. Jealous—and every time I saw his warm and honest face, it took everything I had not to put my fist through it. “I know I was a dick to him today. I need a new method to distract myself from wanting to murder him.”
“What was your old method?”
