“Will you stop running?” he called out.
I spun to face him, tears of frustration clouding my vision. “I’m not! Where in the world would I go where you couldn’t find me anyway?”
He nodded, determination hardening his face as his long stride ate up the distance to me. “It’s true,” he admitted. “I will always come for you. Always.”
I closed my eyes against his intense stare. My hand blindly reached behind me, searching until it felt the glass door that led to the large balcony. The coolness of it grounded me.
“Why?” I whispered, anxious to know the truth. “It’s just the bond making you want me.”
“Why?” he asked and stepped forward, gradually corralling me against the sliding door. My eyes popped open when the glass met my back. “Because you’re absolutely everything I’veever wanted and didn’t know I needed.” He leaned over me, resting his weight on a forearm. His other hand delved into my hair to lightly pull on a coil. “These curls,” he breathed like they entranced him. His thumb grazed my cheek on its way down. I frowned, but he tugged at my bottom lip. “This mouth. Gods, this mouth. It doesn’t know when to shut up.”
My brows flew into my hairline. That wasn’t where I thought he was going to take it. Something about kissing me or tasting me maybe. But not that.
He continued, blind to my confusion, “It argues and pushes me. It questionseverything, driving me crazy until all I want to do is press my lips against it and coax other sounds from its depths.”
Oh.
His eyes trailed up my face, lingered on the freckles over the bridge of my nose, to eventually meet my gaze. There was no hiding from the truth he bared in that look, and I didn’t know if I could take much more of his honesty.
“You are spirited and fierce—my equal in every way. I don’t need the bond to see your loyalty and kind heart, or to know that I would cease to exist if anything ever happened to you.”
I slowly shook my head. He couldn’t mean all that. “You c-can’t possibly…It’s the bond’s influence.”
He smirked, like he knew he had me right where he wanted. “Our bond is in its fledgling stages. Emotions and a heightened sense of one another are the only consequences. I know my own mind, and I’ve had these thoughts long before I saved your life and weopened this door.”
I grappled to find something to hold on to—for some reason that could explain away the pressure in my chest at his words. He couldn’t feel that way about me. Gods, he shouldn’t admit it so openly either. It forced me to look at him in a different light,to see what possibly drew me to him as well. I wasn’t ready to go there.
“It won’t work,” I pleaded. “I’m not your equal, Kaiden. I wasn’t raised in your world; a world that’s tried to kill me my entire life.”
His hands cupped my face, keeping me from turning away or closing my eyes. “I’ll step down as heir in a heartbeat if you need me to, but I think we can do more good for our people—ourpeople—together.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead, melting a hardened corner of my heart. “We could change everything, Eryn. And not just for nightmares.”
I thought I was working with a completed puzzle, but Kaiden just revealed a whole piece that I never knew existed. Power, not the kind from magick. He was offering me the power to decide my future. All I had to do was give myself to him, to the bond, and everything would change.
sixteen
Kaiden
The constant, steady beat of my heart merged with the thrum in my chest until I couldn’t tell if it was my heart that matched Eryn’s or hers that was in sync with mine. One of her legs was thrown over my waist. I’d woken with my palm against her bare thigh, and the supple feel of the smooth skin was all I’d thought about for the last hour.
An entire hour that I’d laid here, awake, while she slept soundly against me. There should be a rule against this. Technically, it was unavoidable. Pillows were shoved between us each night. We slept under separate blankets. Yet somehow, our bodies found one another. The past two mornings, I woke before the sun to the addictive feel of her touch.
I left before she noticed—knowing our position would only stress her more—but I wanted to spend the day here, wrapped in her delicious scent. Extracting myself was a delicate process, but once again, she slept through the dip of the mattress andrustling of the soft sheets. I crept out of the bedroom and down the stairs without turning on a light until I reached the kitchen.
French toast was on the menu for this morning, and I got to work gathering my ingredients. My body on autopilot, I thought over the past two days and the strained truce my bond and I seemed to have settled into. Basically, it involved not speaking. Aside from a quiet ‘thank you’ after Ezra acquired some clothes for her, we hadn’t exchanged anything other than awkward silence.
I added milk and cinnamon to the eggs, whisked them, and then mixed in a splash of vanilla. She needed time. That’s what I told myself and why I hadn’t stalked her around this small apartment for an answer. She hadn’t attempted another escape, so I knew we’d made some progress, but was it enough?
“Oh, good morning.”
I spun at the sound of her voice, the loaf of bread swinging in my hand. Her little bare feet tried to burrow into the hardwood as I stared. Snapping out of it, I gave her a soft smile and gestured at the chairs.
“Morning. Breakfast will be ready soon if you’re hungry.”
Instead of taking a seat, she carefully slid around me to the cabinet beside the fridge and reached for a mug. I carried the gallon of milk over, knowing it was her preferred drink of choice in the morning, and our skin brushed at the handle. The tips of my fingers tingled, but she pulled away before the feeling could spread.
