The heady flavor rolling off of him provides a momentary distraction from the tension in my throat, but even so, I nearly choke on the name.
“Grey,” I whisper.
The door shuts.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad, because I’m not telling you.”
“I have a right to know,” I say.
“No, you don’t,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t even have the right to ask,” he says, “Not anymore.” My face twists, but he continues before I can argue. “If you really wanted to know, you would have asked that night. And I would have told you. But you didn’t. Why?”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer.
“You don’t care about Grey,” he declares. “You don’t regret it. You didn’t then, and you don’t now. So why do you want to know? Really.”
My mouth opens and shuts, but I can tell Elliot actually wants an answer, so I take a deep breath before I confess, “I just don’t want you to carry my sins for me.”
He shrugs.
“Why not? I carry everyone else’s.”
He says that as if it should bring me comfort, but it doesn’t. It just makes it worse.
I sigh, resigning myself from the conversation, and continue to make my way around the room.
There’s a few books sat beside the sofa, and this deep in the west wing, you can barely hear the rest of the pack. I see the appeal.
“So…You brought me to your man cave?” I ask, cringing.
Elliot chuckles, baring his sharp teeth. He doesn’t have his grill in tonight. Too flashy for a Tuesday, I guess. But his bright white teeth still glint in the low light as he smiles at me.
“Would you rather we go to my room?” he asks, watching me carefully.
“So I can roll around in your sex-covered sheets again?” I drum my fingers over the back of the couch. “No, thank you.”
“Sex-covered?”
There’s an inflection in his voice that tells me he’s being coy, and when I turn, I find him leaning against the edge of the desk, arms and ankles crossed, frowning at me.
Fates, he’s such a slut.
“That’s not going to work on me, Cross. You might be able to smooth-talk the rest of Highcrest into your bed, but don’t forget, I actually know you.”
His tail jumps, and his ears stand.
“Is that so?”
I lift a brow in challenge, as if to say ‘tell me I’m wrong,’ and he promptly shakes his head.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he says. “Because if you knew me, then you would know that only claimed partners are allowed upstairs.”
