He shook his head, the lines either side of his mouth tightening a second before he rasped, “Not since I moved out of the family home.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to be tied down.”
I winced and started to pull away but his fingers tangled with mine and kept me in place. “I’m sorry, Brennan.”
He pursed his lips. “Don’t be.”
“Don’t be?” I queried, bewildered. “I forced you—”
“You’ll learn fast enough, Camille, that no O’Donnelly is forced to do anything they don’t want to do already.” He stared at me, and I knew he saw my concern, because a smirk appeared, one that filled me with confusion.
I was the spider who trapped the fly.
So why was I feeling suddenly as if I was the one who’d grown wings?
“You were on my radar long before I was on yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“You think I forgot that promise to your ma? Do you know how many promises I’ve made in my life, Camille?” His hand snapped out, and though I flinched, he ignored it and settled his fingers around my chin. “Take a guess.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Take a guess,” he repeated, and I tried not to shiver as his thumb whispered along the line of my jaw. He was capable of stirring something in me with the softest of touches, something that had never been stirred before.
Was that chemistry?
I knew we had it.
Had known when he’d pushed me up against the stables and, instead of crying or being filled with fear, I’d just felt his solid presence against me and had wanted more. Had wanted the heat of him to sink into my very bones.
After a lifetime of being cold, to feel the embers of banked fire was enough to draw sensations out of me I’d never experienced before.
“People make promises all the time,” I rasped. “And they break them as easily as they made them.”
He tutted. “And there you go again with your generalized assumptions, Camille. I’m not most people.”
“Neither am I,” I admitted. “Promises mean something to me.”
“That was why you thought you had leverage over me, I know. To you, you’d act to make sure a promise wasn’t broken, wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” I agreed, but shame filled me, and he saw it because his head tipped to the side. “I have broken one though.”
“To your sisters?”
It was a good guess, but he was right nonetheless.
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly. “What did you promise them?”
“To protect them from Father.”
“After Mariska died?”
“Yes.”