But Melena held back. And now she noticed that there was something different about him tonight. Something different in the relaxed state of his glyphs, in his schooled expression.
“You were gone for a long time,” she murmured. And then she did start to approach him, though not with the jubilation she felt just a moment ago. This was something heavier. Something that stung as the realization began to dawn on her. “You’ve fed. You went out to find a blood Host. A woman?”
He didn’t deny it.
Damn him, he just stood there, watching impassively as she slowed to a stop in front of him. The array of skin markings on his arms under his rolled-back sleeves were calm, satiated. “Did you f**k her too, Lazaro?”
Behind her, Melena heard Jehan quietly clear his throat. There was brief movement in the corridor at her back, followed by the polite closing of a door as the two warriors made a hasty exit.
“Did you?” she repeated, now that it was just she and Lazaro in the passageway.
He swore, roundly, fiercely under his breath. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She scoffed. “You know what’s ridiculous? Sitting around waiting for you to return. Hoping that I didn’t somehow push you away tonight. But how can I push you away when I never had you in the first place?”
She swept past him on a wounded, furious cry. She didn’t know if he followed. In that moment, she didn’t care.
But he had followed her. She had only made it to the main floor of the mansion’s residential wing when Lazaro halted her by grasping her hand. “Melena—”
“You know what else is ridiculous?” she fumed at him. “Hoping you’d come back and tell me that you realize there’s something serious going on between us too.” She glanced away, giving a shake of her head. “It’s ridiculous to expect that a man who’s been living his life like a ghost for twenty years could ever admit that he actually feels something again.”
Wrenching out of his light hold, she ran for the stairs. She heard him stalking up behind her, but he didn’t stop her now. Her breath was heaving by the time she found herself in the center of Lazaro’s palatial living room suite.
“I don’t want another blood bond, Melena. I won’t risk it.” His deep voice sounded brittle at her back. “So, whatever you think is happening here between us, it has no future.”
“Whatever I think?” She turned to face him. It stung that he wanted to diminish what they’d shared, but she didn’t believe him. She could see that he cared. But he was also determined to push her away. He truly intended to spend the rest of his life alone, punishing himself for something he couldn’t control. “I know about your family, Lazaro. I know you blame yourself for not being there to save Ellie and the rest of your Darkhaven.”
He glared at her furiously, as if she had violated some boundary simply in speaking of the incident. “They trusted me to keep them safe. I failed them.”
“You weren’t there. That’s all. And that’s a completely different thing.”
“No, not to me. And if you know so much about it, then you should also understand why I left to find a blood Host tonight. After making love with you, if I’d stayed...” He exhaled sharply. “The ifs don’t matter. I don’t want another Breedmate shackled to me and reliant on me for protection, for her sustenance. For her life. I won’t do that to someone again. I prefer to keep my appetites restricted to human females.”
Melena scoffed. “Safe women you can f**k and feed from without the risk of feeling anything.”
He stared, unflinching at her jab. “It is simpler that way, yes.”
“Women who leave you free to walk away and wallow in your guilt and self-flagellation.”
His full lips had compressed in a flat line as she spoke, his expression hardening now. “That’s right, Melena. That’s exactly the kind of woman I prefer. Simple. Safe. Forgettable. What I don’t want is what nearly happened between us today. I’m not going to sacrifice two decades of resolve on a couple of days of passion.”
anted to get to know them: Savage and his easy charm and gorgeous smile. Jehan, with his intriguing past and enigmatic personality. She wanted to know what obligation awaited him in Morocco, and why was he trying to outrun it. Against her own sense of logic or self-preservation, Melena also wanted to stay long enough to understand what had inspired Trygg’s terrifying animosity toward women.
And Lazaro...
Would there ever be enough time in this life to unravel all of his torment and secrets and dark, hidden thoughts? Would he even allow her that, if by some miracle they did have more time? All those rooms of his upstairs, missing memories...she wanted to help him fill them back up again.
She wanted to be the one to save him this time.
“Come on,” Sav said. “You really shouldn’t be down here in the operations compound. Lazaro will have our balls if—”
The warrior’s words cut short as a gust of cold, dark air seemed to blow in from the far end of the corridor. He was there. Melena waited to hear Lazaro growl his fury at the men, or demand to know what she was doing back in the Order’s domain after he prohibited her from distracting his team.
But he didn’t growl or demand anything. He just stared at her in silence, his sapphire gaze trained on her alone.
Intense. Penetrating. Focused on her with searingly sensual regard.
She trembled a little under that potent gaze, not from anything resembling fear. Seeing him there, looking at her as though no one and nothing else existed but the two of them, it was all she could do to keep from launching herself at him from down the corridor and flying into his arms.