“You want to make it better? Bring. Me. Eli.”
Kelter snarls. “Shut up!” My head jerks back. “Not you. Eli,” he explains.
“What now?”
“He’s pissed at me.” He stretches his hand across his forehead and grips his temples tight. “Ever, I’m not going to let you hurt yourself like this. At some point, it’s happening whether you want it to or not.”
“You’ll make me fuck you?”
“No, of course not, but you’ll give in. You physically won’t be able to deny my touch. Your body will choose survival. This isn’t about anything else. I told you linking isn’t about love or attraction. It’s about connection. I didn’t ask for this either. Do you think I want to feel this way? To have these thoughts about you?”
He rips his hand away from his forehead. His eyes pulse dark green over a hazel background. “I don’t. I spent a year with you tryingnotto feel any of this. But we’re past that. The gods chose to bring us together. They chose us to support each other through maturation and be linked forever. So let’s do this before it kills us. We’re both miserable, plus I still have my other cravings. The blood only does so much.”
I try to stop the way I feel, the way my nipples harden, the way heat races through me. It’s impossible to block the images I conjure. Of Eli’s head between my legs, the feel of his knife deep inside me. His tongue on my neck. Flashes of so many moments together. “Kelter.” I’m breathless and beaten. “Stop.”
He holds my cheek. “Neither of us want this, but I’ve already seen you through him. I’ve felt you… tasted you.”
I extend my foot and drive my heel into his balls.
He groans and smacks both hands over his crotch. “You think I’m going to be the perfect example of a man when my heart is threaded with yours and my entire body is literally dying without you in my arms? You know this isn’t like me. I had no idea that linking would be this intense.”
My bones crackle with pain. My muscles burn. But the rage thrumming my nerves mixed with the tenderness I still have for him is the most debilitating of all. “I don’t need you to be perfect—I need you to be my friend! You only want me because we’re linking.”
“I know!” he bites out.
Contempt rolls over my shoulders and shoves them back. “If you knew me at all you’d know I would never want to be with someone just because fate thinks it’s a good idea.”
Still holding his balls, his cheeks red with the grimace he can’t wipe from his face, he spits out each word. “It’s not fate—it’s the gods. And we’ll be dead by tomorrow morning if we deny it.”
“Then we die.”
I might as well have pulverized Kelter’s heart with the gutted look he gives me. The strain is gone from his voice, quiet dejection in its place. “You’d rather die than be with me?”
I pound my fist onto the cave floor. “I’d rather die than hurt Eli!”
Kelter pushes away from me, the hurt in his eyes battering my heart. “Why?”
I cover my mouth. How did that come out? Why would I care about hurting Eli? That’s my first thought. But I know why. I do.
“Because he’s loyal and protective and as painfully blunt as he is perfectly mad. And because he sees me. He sees every broken bit. He sees my visions and my lies and scars from years of being tossed aside. And he doesn’t want to change a damn thing. With him, I’m—” I cut myself off. Not because Kelter looks like I’ve ripped his heart from his chest and squashed it flat, but because just as I venture deeper down that path of why, into the realm of forbidden feelings and layers of denial, my heart closes. Little doors slam shut all around it, keeping me from exploring further.
Loving Eli is inconceivable.
Chapter 27
EVER
It’s time for the Scrape.” Kelter stands below the arched entrance to our room, arms loose at his sides, but he can’t hide the tension tearing him apart. Nor the friction between us.
“Don’t carry me this time,” I warn.
“Okay, then take my hand. I’m not allowed to let you walk freely outside this room. We’ll get out of here soon. I promise. Zandrite is close to helping me. He trusts me now. He’ll unmerge me from Eli, linking will cure me of my cravings and everything will be okay again.”
I don’t have the emotional strength to respond to all that, not when every nerve in my body is firing in an intoxicating blend of pain and pining. “I don’t want to watch another fight.”
“I know.” Kelter twines his fingers with mine. Even that touch zips heat into the rest of me. He forces an agonized smile onto his face that I don’t return and leads me out of the room, down damp hallways and into the arena. The thrones sit just beyond center, a front row seat to death. A fresh circle outlines the fighting area, drawn in the dirt with a white powder that stinks of mushrooms.
Rowdy men fill the shadowy arena, extending to the far edges. Like the other nights, it smells like sweat and blood and semen, old flesh and decay. I squeeze Kelter’s hand. I want to blink and be gone. Damn crowds.
