“How fucking poetic. Yet we can’t fall in love?” Her vicious smile turns her lips up in a way that makes me want to bite them.
“Youcan’t fall in love withme,” I snap, immediately realizing my mistake.
Kelter scoffs.That’s all you’re capable of—mistakes.
My biggest mistake is saving your whiny ass,I say, but we both know he’s right.
Never sits with my sloppy words for far too long, deciphering what was left unsaid. Such a stupid, risky thing to say. Revealing I want more than her body would only make it harder to stop her from falling for me. She can’t know. But I can’t seem to push her away like I need to. “Now put that hand in your panties.”
She looks right at me, stretches her arms up and tucks them under her head, positioning her gaze downward to watch how my hand tries to make up for the space between us, the forbidden touch. “I said I can’t.”
My stomach dips, the rest of me rigid and violent inside with the need to fill, the craving to have her surround me. “But you want to, don’t you?” I ask, though I already know how much she wants to, the courage she clings to but can’t put into action.
The glare she sends my way softens into a pleading grimace. “Maybe.”
Challenge accepted. But I can’t. I shouldn’t.
Then don’t do it.
Enough, Kelter!I yell in my head.
I’m not like your little friends who see your light side and will do anything you want.
I groan out loud.This is between Never and me!
Kelter’s voice lowers to nothing more than an echoing thought.It will never be only you again.
It hasn’t beenonly mefor years, not with my ancestors in my head. I return my focus to Never, and I try to resist. I really do, but the line is so easy to cross with her almost naked body stretched out at my side. I need this as much as she does. “What if I help you?”
“It’s pretty clear that’s not an option.”
“And if it were?” My cock pulses at the possibility of her saying yes.
Her eyebrows dip inward with the doubtful look she gives me. “Then I would take the help.”
“Ready?” I ask. Her eyes widen, alarm and confusion coursing through her and into me in warm waves. “I won’t hurt you. The only crying you’ll do is when you beg for more.”
Chapter 13
ELIVANDER
Kelter’s presence finally pulls away, leaving only shades of anger, a shadow sulking in my mind.
Never’s heart races, but no longer from nerves. She wants this.
I reach inside myself for that piece of her I stole, and like I made her say those words that night in the woods, like I walked her off that broken bridge and into my arms, I take control and slide her hand out from under her head, without even touching her. It’s no different from how I hold up that wall around her heart day after day, keeping her from loving me.
Surprise ripples across her face. “How are you doing that?”
“Did you ever doubt that you’re mine, so much so that I keep a part of you inside me, that I control you?” I ask.
“How?”
“Something happened when I blocked your mother’s magic through your body. I took some of you.”
“You took some of me,” she repeats. “And now you can control me?”
“It wasn’t on purpose. She was using her gift on you, hurting you, so I blocked her magic. But my hands were on you, not her. You were caught in the middle. I’ve never blocked magic indirectly like that before, and I think your essence made it behave differently. It let me take a part of you, and now it’s inside me, under my control.”
