He met my defiance with immediate anger.
“You do not belong there,” he said.
I hesitated, not expecting such a reaction. He was the prince—not my prince. He was going to return. If I didn’t go there with him, what were we doing? Why the stolen kisses? Why the denial of gratification as if we were meant to be more?
“I don’t belong there. Or with you?” I said quietly.
Blake’s expression hardened but he didn’t answer.
Irritated, I turned to leave. “It’s getting late.”
I grasped the door handle and pulled but the sudden smack of his hand against the wood kept me from opening it.
I gasped in disbelief, letting my fingers slip from the handle.
When I turned, Blake was there, a mere breath away, his arm over my shoulder, hand pressed firmly against the door, pinning me with his body.
“It isn’t safe for you there,” he said, his voice defensive but strained like he was conflicted.
Every rise of his chest and every breath he took enraptured me.Did he not feel it too?“That sounds like an excuse to keep me from you—how can you deny…”
I paused, unsure what to call the intensity I felt in his presence—the way our everi responded to one another, the way everything suddenly was easier because of him. The way I wanted to melt into his arms, but this notion that our future posed such a problem was pissing me off.
He had to feel it too. Right?
He didn’t budge, keeping me trapped there in his space until he made up his mind. When his eyes found mine, they were dark as night.
“There is a connection between us. I do not deny it,” he murmured, his words like a forbidden caress across my soul. “But it is not an excuse to be foolish.”
His everi flowed through me, stimulating nerve endings in rapid succession.
“How is wanting to be near you foolish?” I whispered. “I’m not safer without you, Blake. I’m weaker.”
Blake closed his eyes, his expression torn.
“Why me?” he whispered.
I heard the struggle in his words as his demons plagued his mind, demons that were his own, yet he was letting strangle me. Why else would he ask that? How was I supposed to explain what was happening between us? This powerful, overwhelming and intoxicating yearning to be near him—I should be the one asking him why he was doing this to me!
“I don’t know,” I said.
Blake growled in displeasure and leaned in, his lips brushing my ear and jaw. Everything within me was surrendering to him but this streak of restraint in him was consuming me.
I had no idea why this—connection, reaction, synergy, thing—was happening, but I didn’t care anymore. I was tired of ignoring it. Tired of trying to understand it. I wanted to give in. I wanted him to give in.
Instead, he pulled away.
The cold air in his absence stung. He was pacing. Every step that he took made my pulse throb harder.
“Why are you resisting?” I yelled, glaring.
But he wouldn’t look at me.
“You’ve kept me at arm’s length since I met you,” I said. “Warning me away, withdrawing when you never would with someone else. I don’t want you to treat me like this—like I’m special. I’m not. I don’t want a knight in shining armor.”
Blake stopped, his face hidden in shadow.
“I can’t, Anna.”
