Page 69 of Bond of Passion

“Don’t need to.” He cracked the egg into the bowl, his big hands working precisely, expertly—the way they did everything from giving her comfort to making her come. “He’s tormented every damned day.”

“And you think that’s enough? Don’t you want him dead?”

Tavin whipped the eggs with a fork, sparking happy but unwelcome memories of the first time he’d made her an omelet, right here in this kitchen. He’d explained the process and the ingredients, and he’d kissed her on the back of the neck every time he walked past.

When he finally fed her the omelet from his fork, she’d nearly wept at the taste. Human food was so much more flavorful and less disgusting than demon food.

“If Gristlen’s killer was dead,” Tavin said as he whipped furiously, “he couldn’t pay back his debt.”

Surely, he was joking. “You seriously think he can pay for what he did?”

“He saves lives now.” He plopped some butter into a pan. She used to love to watch him cook. He said he didn’t like to do it, so when he did make something, he wanted it to be awesome. “Just last week, he revived a werewolf cub that drowned. And he stopped a false angel from bleeding out after giving birth.” He started prepping an onion and a tomato from the bowl on the island. “I know it’s not enough. It may never be enough. But he wouldn’t save any lives at all if he was dead.”

Deja sat quietly, trying to get a bead on his emotions, but he was either controlling them or whatever he was feeling wasn’t powerful enough for her to sense.

She didn’t like that. They were talking about her murder. About him being her murderer. And his emotions were a void.

Wanting more from him, an acknowledgment at the very least, she put down her coffee mug, sloshing a little over the rim. “Tavin?”

“Yeah?” His gaze was locked on the vegetables as he chopped them.

“That guy? It’s you, isn’t it?”

Closing his eyes, he stopped chopping and took a deep, rattling breath. When his lids lifted, his eyes had gone cold. Ice-cold. And if there’d been a void in his emotions before, it was a gaping chasm of pure nothingness now.

“Yes.”

At his stark, hard response, she recoiled, her world falling away from under her feet. For the first time, she felt as if she’d finally met Tavin the Assassin.

Because even when he’d killed her, when he’d looked into her eyes, she’d seen pain. She knew that now. Tavin the Assassin hadn’t shoved a blade between her ribs. Tavin the Lover had.

And now she didn’t know which was worse.