I didn’t know whether to be flattered by that or offended that I was a step up from dog water.
After shaking my head more to clear my thoughts than to dissuade anything of what he’d just said, I focused on the canteen and put it back in the satchel. I stood to my full height of five-foot-three, which was laughable in the face of this nearly seven-foot-tall vampire.
I might be small but I was spunky, and right now facing off with Sebastian meant I felt completely unstable, especially because of what he was to me and what he’d just said.
“What do you remember?” I asked again, hoping to steer the conversation back to where it had been.
He was silent for a second and I held my breath, expecting him to be stubborn, but I let out a breath when he scratched his jaw and his shoulders relaxed a fraction more.
“I remember taking down a lot of Assembly fuckers. I remember freeing Otherworld creatures.” His voice was so deep I felt the vibration along my skin. “I remember a lot of blood, violence, and dead bodies littering the ground from my rage. But then there was a pulse and blast of energy, and I cracked my head on the wall before everything went dark.”
He glanced toward the entranceway of the cave once more, a muscle under his jaw ticking furiously, as if he were reliving that.
“And I remember waking up in the forest, stumbling around like I was drunk, unable to see or hear, feeling that fucking sun draining me dry before darkness claimed me once more.”
He looked at me again, his gaze roving slowly up and down my form. I visibly shivered just as he tore his focus from me and looked around at the cave again.
“Where exactly is here?”
I shrugged. “Hell if I know.” I sat beside the small fire I’d started before he’d woken up. Despite it being daylight outside, the interior of the cavern was cold and dank, with water dripping somewhere and echoing annoyingly off the walls.
He only stood across the cavern for a second before he came closer. I eyed him warily, not sure what his intentions were. He sat across from me, the fire this sort of shield between us, and I let myself relax marginally.
We were both silent for long moments as I stared into the flames, listening to the wood crackle as the flames licked across it.
“The smoke is green,” he mused, as if to himself, and I glanced up, surprised to see that he was staring at me instead of the flames.
“You really don’t know or remember anything?” At his stoic look I exhaled through my nose. “I watched a Leandrean open a portal. I saw the humans surrounding him all but melt away from the power. He thrust us into another dimension, which is where I got the few supplies I have… because I found them scattered amongst body parts.”
He grunted and looked back at the fire, as if me telling him how fucked all of this was didn’t affect him.
When he glanced back at me I swallowed, because the look in his gaze was intense and piercing. He stared at me as if I were his, and I knew if we were going off fate or destiny or whatever, I was, and he’d forever see me as such.
“Can you stop doing that?”
One dark eyebrow slowly rose.
That is so not attractive. Nope. Not at all.
“What exactly do you want me to stop doing?”
“You know.” There was a long pause where neither one of us spoke.
I was too stubborn to look away from him, and it seemed that he was as well.
When he didn’t say anything, I gritted out, “You keep staring at me, and it’s not the kind of staring that is friendly either, if you get my drift.”
“You’re my mate. You’re mine. I’m going to look at you, revel in the fact I found my female after all this time.”
I didn’t answer but I felt my face heat up at his words, this strange feeling moving through me. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
I kept telling myself that, but even I didn’t believe it.
I’d never had this kind of attention solely on me. I always kept to myself, and after my parents had passed away, leaving me alone with no siblings or close family, I never wanted to be noticed by anyone. I was content to be a lone soul in this world because that’s what I’d become comfortable with.
It was safer that way, so I didn’t have to pretend, to put on this facade, a glamour that everything was okay when it really wasn’t. Because being lonely fucking sucked.
“I’ve waited so long for you—”
My breath caught and I snapped my gaze up to stare into his eyes.
“— that the pure joy and pleasure I get just staring at you is sustenance to me, female.”