“Nate, I’m aware of the dangers…” She brought the conversation back to what they’d been discussing. “From both your side and mine.”
His broad shoulders tensed as he lifted mugs from the draining rack. “Diff is I won’t kill your brethren and risk alienating you.”
But he just might die at their hands.
Her stomach knotted at the truth of what could happen, wishing he was her destined mate.
She had to find a way to navigate this treacherous path fanning out in front of them without getting any blood spilled.
“This will be harder for you, Ely.” He faced her, setting the beakers on the table. “I won’t, or at least, I’ll try not to demand more than you can give, timewise, but I need to see you every night whenever I’m on Earth.”
“All right.” She nodded, already hating the thought of being parted from him when what he said knocked the air out of her lungs. And she gaped at him. “What do you mean not on Earth? Nate—” She crossed to him. “Please don’t say the Dark Realm.”
He ran his warm, calloused palms over her arms. “Ely, a part of my life has to be lived there, too.”
Gods, the skin contact feltsooogood. She wanted to lean into him, so he could touch her everywhere and ease this impossible furnace within her—ease the arousal coiling through her body. Ely fought to concentrate on what they were talking about. “Because of what you are?”
He gave a terse nod.
“But Otium demons have lived here without ever going back to the Dark Realm, so why can’t you?”
“It’s because of what you saw in the basement. No Otium possesses the type of demonic monster I have within me. I’m an aberrant, Ely.”
Aberrant?She frowned. “And the symbionts? How did you get them? I know Shadow was badly wounded and dying, and you put some in her.”
“Not dying. She died.”
Her heart stuttered at the truth. “It means you did, too,” she whispered.
He nodded and crossed to the fridge. “Yes. Aba brought me back. The symbiont he used somehow trapped my departing soul and merged with it.”
“But that’s good, right?”
Dark laughter. “If me breathing is good, then I suppose it is.” He retrieved milk from the fridge. But his sardonic tone twisted her heart.
“Nate, please, just tell me. I don’t want coffee. I’m too hot—unless you can make it iced.” Her gaze fixed on him. “I want to understand—to help you if I can. You matter to me.”
He set the milk bottle on the table, and his expression softened, a hint of red sliding through his irises. “No one can,laika. Unfortunately, my symbiont ties me to that world, and I need to go there to sort of…recharge.”
“Just one symbiont? You have five.”
“I’m aware…” He poured coffee into both mugs, full in one and a half in another, topped the half with cold milk, then got out the ice tray and added ice cubes. “The others didn’t survive the red one.”
Right. “Recharge how?” she asked, her throat suddenly bone-dry. “Nate, please tell me you don’t have to sleep with others.”
He looked up from stirring the coffee. “I did for a time when the change started,” he said, his gaze never wavering from hers. “It was…easier.”
“And now?” Memories of him with the human in the nightclub, then later with the Fae, reared up again, and her stomach heaved. “Because I can’t do this if you—”
“I don’t.” He shook his head. “Now I know what I need. It’s what I take from males here. In the Dark Realm, it’s more, and it satiates the symbiont better. Ely, I was feeding when you saw me both times. Just like this…” He set the mug down on the counter next to her, slipped his palm over her throat, his head lowered, his mouth stopping an inch from hers.
Then she felt more, the light caress of his breath on her lips, his scent and nearness enfolding her, stealing her thoughts for a second. She rather suspected the latter was all her—and likely how his prey felt, too—drawn to his dangerous aura, compelling charisma, and gorgeous face. Butshefelt far more for him than wanting instant gratification.
“…not kissing them.” Nate’s quiet voice pulled her back. “But I have to touch them, have eye contact, and draw on their darkness. To be fully satiated, the symbiont requires the emotional one of fear…terror.”
“And not a soul’s dark energy like Shadow’s does?”
“That would have been so much easier.” His thumb gently caressed her throat, but his expression hardened. “Right from the start, it was those ravaged emotions it went for. I’m just the vessel who houses it.”
