She blinked. “Wow. Okay. A little out of the blue.”
“You asked.”
“You’re right.” This shouldn’t be a difficult topic. Not when she’d just asked her two best friends to help her lose her virginity.
But now, every time she thought of losing it to either Jon or Skoll, her brain misfired, and all she could think about was how she’d felt in Mace’s arms with his fangs buried in her throat and the hard ridge of his erection rocking against her core. Even now, her cheeks heated at the memory, and she couldn’t look Blade in the eye.
Because the much more uncomfortable truth was that she was thinking about Blade differently now too. Mace had awakened something inside her, and she was seeing them both in a new, sexy light.
“Well?” Blade prompted. “Now who’s stalling?”
Right again.
“Sorry,” she said, waving her hand in dismissal. “I haven’t really thought about it much. We’ve been kinda busy.”
“Stop lying.”
Guilt burned in the pit of her stomach. Damn him. Continually throwing her words back at her. A gust of wind howled through the mountains, giving her a second to think. Jon and Skoll were both hot. Any female would be lucky to get them into bed. But the truth was that she felt nothing for them. Not sexually, anyway.
Not like what she’d felt with Mace.
“I’m not sleeping with either of them,” she said truthfully.
He seemed surprised—and a little pleased. But maybe that was her imagination.
“Why not? You could do worse. I mean, from what I know about Skoll, he’s a standup guy. Jon’s a dick, but I’m pretty sure he knows his way around a bedroom.”
Must have been her imagination, after all. For some reason, she felt a little put out. Which was ridiculous, given their oath. No matter how much changed regarding her newfound libido, the pact remained, and she would have to get her shit together or risk losing the best friends anyone could ask for.
“So, you think I should proposition one of them?” And how would that even go? “Hi, wanna have sex? I don’t know what I’m doing, just FYI.”
“Fuck, no.” Blade shifted away from a rivulet of water flowing off the rocks next to him. “I’m wondering why you would say no, when you seemed so adamant about losing your virginity.”
Shrugging, she stepped away from the growing stream on the ground. Geez, how much longer was this storm going to last? “Maybe I realized it’s no big deal.”
There was a brief pause. “Is it because of what happened between you and Mace?”
His words, spoken in a rigid, controlled voice, stole her breath. How did he know? A knot of panic formed in her gut. Panic and guilt and a fiery blast of heat.
“No!” she said quickly. Too quickly. Tooguiltily. “Nothing happened. It was just blood. You know that.” Gods, could she sound any more defensive?
“Right.” Blade’s voice was deceptively quiet. “Just blood.”
A spark of indignant anger helped alleviate some of the guilt. “Yes, just blood. You know it was, and I don’t know what’s up your ass, but knock it off. You’re just jealous that I was able to help him when youcouldn’t.”
She regretted her words the second they left her lips, and once again, Blade called her on her crap.
“Are you serious?” He stared at her in disbelief, completely oblivious to the fact that water was pouring down his shoulder now. “You think I’m jealous of you because my skills weren’t enough to fully heal him?”
Yes, she knew it was ridiculous. Butsomethingwas up his ass. “Maybe you wanted to be the one to offer your vein.”
He waited for a peal of thunder to fade away, but he still had to shout over the din of the rain and wind. “First of all, my blood couldn’t nourish him the way yours did. Second, even if I had offered my vein, he wouldn’t have been turned on by it.”
So that was his problem? He was trulythatbothered by the fact that Mace had gotten a little aroused?
“Blade,” she said softly, “that’s a dangerous path to go down. You can’t be jealous of him. You can’t. We swore an oath to prevent exactly that. Jealousy could tear our team apart.”
“I know.” Finally, he stepped away from the water, tucking himself closer to her, bringing his comforting warmth with him. “Believe me, I know—”
