I expect him to refuse to tell me, but he doesn’t. “It said,I’d do it again.”
“Do what again?” I ask.
His hand tenses under mine. But maybe it was the perfect time to ask, his mind and heart padded with the tranquility of teva, his defenses down, because he actually answers. “I’d live every single lifetime and die every single death again to get to this life. With you.”
I don’t have a response, but even if I did, I’d be too distracted by the way my heart is instantly caged. Unfeeling. I let go of his hand to hold my chest. A thousand locks click into place.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he says quickly.
Maybe if my heart were free, it’d hurt more.
“But I don’t want you to hate me anymore,” he adds.
And that does hurt. Because I don’t need to feel love to know I’m missing it. A heavy cloud rolls over us. I grasp my shirt to have something to hold onto as I let the most difficult words pass through my lips. “I haven’t in a long time.”
He twists to the side and leans on his elbow, staring down at me with a smile. “I know. You can’t get enough of me.”
I laugh, and the cloud breaks into dozens more. “You egotistical bastard. It’s your fault. You were terrible at making me hate you.”
“I noticed. Which means I need to have the tightest control over your heart.”
My smile vanishes. The sky darkens. “I know.”
“And maybe the rest of you too.” He pulls his knife from his pocket, unsheathes it with his teeth and pokes my belly with the blade, an amused smile owning his cheeks.
“Why’s that?”
“I’m not sure I can trust you to take on Zandrite without mecontrolling you. You’ll stab yourself. You wave my knife around like you’re battling your own shadow.”
I work my fingers up his forearm, following the veins. “That bad?”
“Yes.”
He’s so brutally honest that I laugh again. “Then show me.”
He gives me a look that reveals how hopeless he believes the endeavor to be, then transforms his face with a roguish grin. “You want to fight me?”
I release his fist and throw both my arms behind my head, blowing out a noisy breath. “Well, we already did the fucking thing.”
He taps my stomach with the flat of the knife. “We could do it again.”
As tempting as it is to lose myself endlessly with this man, I turn him down with a shake of my head. “That probably won’t help with the Zandrite situation.”
He rolls the rest of the way over and straddles my hips, knife tip pressed into my shirt, right over the birthmark between my ribs. “I want something in return.”
“I have to barter with my body to get your help?”
“Not your body—that’s already mine.” He looks at me as if another word will send him tumbling down a mountainside he can’t climb back up. “What else are you willing to give me?”
Chapter 47
ELIVANDER
Those indigo eyes stare up at me. Her lips curl with an almost smile, and I realize I’m much too close to her. Kelter’s cravings will be back with full force, and I’ll need some way to dampen them.
“I can’t give you my heart,” she says. “You won’t let me.”
“No, I already have that too.” I drag the tip of my knife down her shirt until it drops into her navel.
