All hollowed out, I slumped on top of her. Jesus goddamn Christ.
CHAPTER NINE
(Paige)
Plonking the last of my clothes into my duffel, I swallowed around the tightness in my throat. I wanted to feel numb, or maybe angry. I usually did subconsciously reach for anger when I was hurting, but the habit failed me right then. So I was stuck feeling like shit. My heart ached, my stomach kept rolling, and a weird pressure was building in my chest.
Shit, this sucked balls.
I’d woken to find myself alone and a NST waiting for me on the nightstand. Max was pottering around the apartment, and he’d no doubt heard me moving around, but he hadn’t even so much as popped his head through the doorway.
We hadn’t showered together the way we usually did on waking. Well of course we hadn’t. Our time was up now. And he was no doubt waiting for me to get back to my own apartment.
Although it kind of stung that he was clearly avoiding me, I was glad he was giving me space. I didn’t want him hovering over my shoulder while I packed, because I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to hide just how hard this was. Not the packing part, but the knowledge that I’d never be back here. I was now simply one of his fellow legion members again—no more, no less.
My stomach flipped once more. I had no one to blame for this but myself. I’d sensed that I could totally fall for this man. It had scared the shit out of me, because he wouldn’t welcome that love. But I hadn’t walked away. Hadn’t ended our arrangement early. Nor had I refused to take his blood, which had been seriously dumb.
I was still kind of shocked that he’d fed from me. He hadn’t only done it the one time. No, I’d woken to the feel of his teeth slicing into my shoulder at one point. He’d also bitten my inner thigh while finger-fucking me during a later session. Each time, he’d pressured me to bite him in return, and I’d put up no resistance. Like a dumbass.
Finished packing my clothes, I began grabbing my other bits and bobs. I was searching for my hair tie when Max finally appeared. He didn’t enter the room, though. He leaned against the doorjamb, his expression unreadable.
God, he was gorgeous. Sexy. Hotter than hot. And waiting for me to get gone.
I cleared my throat. “Hey. I’ll, um, be out of here in just a sec. I can’t find my hair tie. Have you seen it anywhere?”
He slowly shook his head, uncharacteristically quiet and remote.
“If you find it at any point, pass it to me when you get a chance.” I zipped up my duffel, snatched it off the bed, and crossed to him. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
He lazily pushed away from the doorjamb but didn’t step aside. “Paige.” He didn’t say more. He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face.
And I got it. He was worried I might have read something into him breaking one of his personal rules. That was why he’d stayed out of my way and was now acting so distant. It was a message, plain and simple, that nothing had changed. Since I hadn’t actually needed that reminder, the whole thing was a slap in the face.
“You don’t have to say anything, Max.” I would seriously rather he didn’t.
“Feels like I do,” he said, his voice pitched lower than usual.
“You really don’t. I’m quite aware that nothing has changed for you. There’s no need for you to spell it out. I get it. I’m good. We’re good. If you’re worried that things are going to be weird or awkward, don’t. We’ll work together just fine. Hey, maybe we’ll even be friends.”
A hardness slid into his eyes. “I could never be platonic friends with you, Paige,” he stated, his tone flat. “I don’t say it to be an asshole, I just … I couldn’t do it.”
Well it would be tricky, given the sexual tension between us was still as acute as ever, but it would dissolve eventually. And since, unlike me, he didn’t have any none-too-platonic feelings dancing around his system, he wouldn’t have that shit to contend with. “You won’t always feel that way.”
“You’ll find it so easy for us to be friends, will you?” He said ‘friends’ like it was a dirty word.
“I didn’t say that. I just mean that, well, we’ll both be living at The Hollow for centuries and centuries to come. The law of probability says you’ll get past this feeling at some point. We both will.”
“Centuries,” he echoed quietly, an edge to his voice.
Yeah, centuries of seeing him pretty much every night but never being able to touch him outside of sparring. It was going to be hard as hell at first for sure. But it would get easier. And it was kind of annoying that he was being all surly about this when he wasn’t the one hurting. He just didn’t like that he hadn’t fully worked me out of his system. Nice.