But...it seemed like I did, didn’t it?
How else did I explain how I felt about him?
How else could I ever go this far or accept so many unexplainable things?
“Lucien, I—”
“Don’t,” he hissed, cutting me off with a swipe of his hand. “Don’t say anything.”
The urge to tell him how I felt came strong, but a dam formed in my throat. An obstruction made of fear and shyness. He was the first and only person I’d cared about since losing my parents. I would do absolutely anything in my power to keep him safe, all while knowing I was absolutely useless.
Especially now I knew how different he was.
How valuable he was to the men who wanted him.
“If I didn’t have feelings for you...how else could I have self-medicated with your blood while you were in the shower? How else could I bring myself to drink your very life-force if I didn’t feel connected to you above everyone?”
His body heat buffeted me like a fallen comet. “What?”
“I drank what you gave me this morning.”
He stiffened as if my admission that I’dwillinglyingested his blood—the very blood he’d had to force down my throat before—affected him on a primordial level.
“So you see...I trust you, even after what happened,” I said softly. “I’m not afraid of you and I’m not going to betray you—”
“You were in pain?” he cut in, his voice full of gravel and smoke.
“I was but...now, I’m not. Thanks to you.”
His shirtless chest came alive with patches of heat as if the subject of the conversation turned into molten magma in his veins.
I couldn’t look away as his eyes gleamed, embers replacing his pupils. The longer we stared, the more the air arced with electricity. I could almost taste power bleeding off him, feathering out to lick across my skin and rattle the windows in their frames.
Whisper whipped to look at the windows, baring his teeth at the shivering glass.
“Eh, Lucien...?” I trembled as another wash of ridiculously hot energy blasted from him.
The curtains quivered.
Red shadows danced over his chest—
Whisper snarled, looking back to Lucien and nipping his arm. Lucien coughed and stumbled backward as Whisper bit a little too sharp.
The spell broke.
The windows stopped rattling and the air temperature returned to normal instead of blistering like the sun.
God,nowwhat?
What the hell just happened?
Who the hellishe?
And why wasn’t I running like I should?
“Are you...” I swallowed hard, trying so hard to pretend all of this was normal. “Are you okay?”
Raking both hands over his face, his shoulders sagged. Dropping his arms, he caught my eyes and slowly shook his head.
