Fuck.
I thought about the last time that had happened.
When Neev had broken her arm and I’d warned Ma before my baby sister had even taken a tumble. Ma had told me I had the Sight too. Just not as strong as hers.
My lips formed into a mulish line as I rejectedthatbullshit.
What I saw washopefulthinking. Because as much as this man was an idiot, I loved him. Which, I guessed, made us idiots in love.
“Not really. Marriage wasn’t even something I had on the horizon. I wanted her to go to college. I wanted her to have that career she so craved. I wanted to fix her heart. Wanted her to live.”
Noble aspirations. But not passionate ones. Nothing that spoke of a love that he claimed to feel for me.
“Why didn’t you want to tie her down?”
“Looking back, I can see that marriage would have protected her, and that was more of a priority for me than anything else. I’d have asked for her hand if her mom had wanted to stop her from going to college. She had health issues from birth, a prognosis that the living conditions she existed in as a child only exacerbated, but I’d never have let Alina put a stop to her dreams.
“I-I didn’t want her that wa…” He broke off. “I didn’t want her.” His shoulders slackened like the admission had taken the wind from his sails.
“Stan?” I prompted when I watched guilt swallow him whole.
“You said it yourself in Coshocton—men and women aren’t allowed to be friends in this life. More so inourworld. There has to be sex or heirs or alliances involved.
“I wanted my friend to be happy. It took her dying and me meeting you to recognize the difference between familial love and what I feel for you.” When my nose scrunched up, he tacked on, “I never said I was smart in all things.”
True.
“Why do you like me?”
“Iloveyou, Kitty.”
“Why?” Swallowing, I turned to him. “What about me made this make sense when I’m so completely different from her? What made you look at me while you were in the hospital and go to these crazy lengths to seek me out? I’m not fragile. I don’t need you to protect me. I’m not soft and?—”
“Your fire is what I need.”
“Feeling cold, are you?” I mocked.
His hands settled on my upper arms as he slowly dragged them along their length. “I need your strength. I need your warmth. Your light. That’s what you are, Kitty. A raging, blazing inferno. I want nothing more than to be around it,you, for the rest of my life.
“You can take me on, Kitty. Warts and all. You’ll make mefeel. You won’t wither away if I growl at you and you won’t hesitate to snarl back at me. You’ll stand at my side like the princess you are—no fear, just more of that fire. And I love that. I loveyou.
“I want you. I want you forever. I want to make love to you, fuck you, breed you, and brand you. I never want to be withoutyou.” His voice broke. “Her death killed something in me. But losing you… I might as well die too.”
My head whipped away from the bleak but elegant gravestone to face him. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s true,” he said hoarsely. “I can feel it. You’re the binds that’ll tie me to this place. What’s the point if I don’t have you? An endless future of being freezing cold when I need your heat?”
“You’re insane,” I spat.
“I told you that the first night in Mexico.”
I gritted my teeth because something twisted in my heart. “And what do I get in return, Stan? Aside from an insanely jealous and possessive ball and chain?”
For a moment, he was speechless. I could see the cogs in his brain working as he tried to figure out what to say to me.
Then, he half-pleaded, “I will never quench that fire in you. I will never do anything to make it stop burning, even if it burns me. I will always protect it and stoke it and do everything to make sure it never dies.
“I will support you, no matter what you choose to do. I will embrace everything that you are because to me, you are perfection and I see no faults, onlyyou.
