Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
“I’m fine. Promise.” I look down to find him watching me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before. It’s not cold or aloof. It’s not even hot with desire. He’s looking at me with something soft and almost tentative in his inky eyes.
It scares the shit out of me, but scrambling off him and diving into the water to put some distance between us is a dick move, and I don’t have it in me. Instead, I look away. “I know I said a lot in the mix, but it’s okay. I don’t need you do to any of those things.”
“Catalina.”
I don’t want to look at him. I’m afraid of what he’ll see on my face. Being with Thane feels so good and so bad at the same time, but at least it’s familiar. He’s cold and I’m needy, and that dynamic is one that I’ve played out again and again. If he changes the game on me, I don’t know how to adapt. If he’s nice to me, I may fall in love with him, and that’s a recipe for disaster.
Really, it’s practically my brand at this point.
“Catalina, look at me.” A pause. “Please.”
Damn it, why did he have to say “please”? I turn back to him, a puppet on a string. He’s still got that look on his face that I don’t understand, but he seems to be trying to mask it, his features falling into the familiar cold, forbidding lines. Relief pulls a shaky exhale from me. “What do you want, Thane?”
He seems to consider and discard several options before he says, “I would like to spend the night with you.”
My heart tries to leap right out of my chest. When it figures out that’s impossible, it dives right into my stomach. God, maybe I am going to cry. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
He doesn’t move. “Are you saying that because you don’t want to sleep with me . . . or because you’re afraid I’m offering because I pity you?”
How dare he reach right into the very heart of me. I have spent so much time saying I don’t give a fuck what the motivation for something is as long as the result feels good. It’s the truth. It has to be.
But it feels like a lie right now.
“Catalina.” Thane doesn’t move, barely appears to breathe, but he feels closer all the same. “Let me hold you tonight.”
Something’s changed.
It can’t be the sex. No matter what the romance novels I consumed by the dozens as a teenager said, sex won’t make a partner fall in love with you. It won’t suddenly cause someone who’s saying all the wrong things—I can’t love you; I will never be with you; we can’t be together—to do a complete one-eighty.
My mother was right about that.
I don’t understand, and because I don’t understand, fear tries to take hold. Ironic that the fear caused by Thane’s words makes me inch toward him. Seek comfort he won’t give me . . .
Except he does.
The second I move toward him, he gathers me into his arms and pulls me close. It surprises a sound out of me that could be a sob. Instead of setting me away, disgusted by my endlessly messy emotions, Thane pulls me closer. He smooths my hair back and runs his hands over me, almost like he’s trying to calm a wild animal.
Like he’s not sure how to do this any more than I am.
“Thane,” I finally manage. “I don’t . . . I can’t.”
“Do you want to?”
Yes. More than I can say. Which is why I should move right now and get the hell away from this man who makes me feel such conflicting things. Maybe this sex didn’t change things for him, couldn’t change things for him, but I can’t deny the new shakiness that permeates every part of my being. “I can’t,” I say again.
Now is where he’ll call me difficult. He’ll point out that I am fickle and as changeable as the wind, first asking to be held and then all but yelling at him when he offers exactly that. He’ll realize I’m exactly as much of a nightmare to be around as everyone else has found. He’ll leave.
They always leave.
Except he . . . doesn’t.
Thane smooths back my hair again. He doesn’t urge me to look into his eyes. He doesn’t ask me again. He just pulls me closer and murmurs against my temple, “I know. It scares me, too.”
I want to argue. No matter what he thinks he knows, we are not the same. If not for a tragedy, he would still be happily married to the love of his life. He may not be as beloved a leader as his sibling, but he’s respected. Even I could see that during my short time in the keep. And Embry loves the hell out of him. Respect and love, two things I’ve chased and never quite reached; even without his husband, he has both in abundance.