“I’m not surrounded by wilting flowers, you know? The men I love, they’re all rough, they’re all demanding, they’re all dangerous. If a little roughness scared me, I’d be terrified all the time.”
Kit didn’t respond right away, his black eyes locked on me. “Love?”
Fuck.I realized my mistake almost instantly. I usually tried to stay away from that loaded word, but I’d gone and said it out loud and now I had to deal with it. Worse, I’d said it to Kit, who wasn’t the type to let that go. He wasn’t a man to let me pretend it hadn’t happened.
No, he would stick with it until I admitted everything.
“Are you including me in that group?” He asked the question with a quiet flatness, as if he didn’t dare allow himself to hope.
Which was an impossibly dumber question than I’d realized. He wanted to understand if I loved him, but he seemed unwilling to accept such an idea.
As for myself, I didn’t have to think much about it. Of course I loved him.
Even if it had taken time for us to figure this out, for us to get to this point, I’d fallen for him a long time ago. It was in the way he’d remained with me, in the way he watched out for me, in how he’d bared his past and his pain to me.
I’d fallen for him before I’d ever realized it, and keeping it from him, when he looked at me with that expression, would have been impossible.
“Of course I love you,”I admitted.
He said nothing at first, his face that expressionless mask as if he needed the words to sink in, as if he needed to test them before he could accept them. Finally, he furrowed his eyebrows. “Jasmine never really loved me,” he whispered. “I loved her, but I never let her see the real me because I knew she couldn’t accept me if she saw it. If she witnessed my darkness, the emptiness inside me, how could she? So I kept that hidden, kept myself under control at all times, which never allowed her to know me enough to love me. I find it difficult to believe or accept that after all you have seen of me, that you could.”
“I couldn’t, not unless you’d shown me that,”I tried to explain.“If you’d hidden yourself, I couldn’t have trusted you enough to fall for you. I don’t need you to be some pretty, safe version of yourself. I only need you to be you, to show me the real you, and you have. I haven’t lived an easy life the last year, have gotten to see the world for what it really is, and I don’t need that gentleness I used to.”
He frowned, as if he didn’t care for that. He placed his hand on my cheek, and I leaned into his touch as he spoke. “You should demand those things, Hera. I wish I could give them to you, could let you have gentle romance, could show you what you deserve.”
I shook my head but kept the contact of his warm palm.“I might have needed that before, but I’m not the same person I used to be. I think I finally understand why people say that shades aren’t the same people they were when they were human, because I’m not. It wasn’t turning into a shade that changed me, but the fact that the world changed around me, people looked at me different, so I couldn’t be the same person. You wouldn’t have fit with the girl I was before, but you fit with who I am now.”
His expression softened, a strange thing to see on such a frightening and severe man. He rubbed his thumb across my cheek, the touch gentle, before he leaned in and offered me a kiss that was nothing like what we shared in the forest. He’d been aggressive then, dominant, where this was an exceedingly soft kiss. His warm lips brushed mine, and I returned it. It was funny that for a man who assured me that he didn’t have this in him, who was so sure he was too harsh and aggressive for me, he could touch me so carefully.
He broke away far too soon, stealing the touch before I’d had my fill. His quiet chuckle filled the car. “We should get going or Deacon will come looking for us.”
Right.He’d so distracted me with his words, with his kiss, that I’d totally forgotten we were headed somewhere important. The burning of my cheeks that he’d managed to blank my mind, that I’d wanted more, and he’d been the one to remind me of our actual purpose, made me want to cover my face and hide.
Kit dragged his thumb over my bottom lip as he offered me an exceedingly sexy smirk. “We’ll finish this later.”
And that was a promise I could get behind…
* * * *
Hera
I walked into the small general store, my gaze hard as I listened for any sign of a trap.
I didn’t distrust Bowen, but I sure didn’t trust him, either. I doubted he’d set me up on purpose, but that didn’t mean much for those he knew. I’d learned that people always had a price, and the price for us would be high. I hadn’t even known him long, knew little about him. It was easy to believe he’d betray me if it suited him.
I had Kit and Deacon flanking me, with Brax, Wade and Knox remaining outside to keep an eye for any danger. Having us all come in together would pose too big a risk.
I went to the front of the general shop, then held up the card Bowen had given me.
The man behind the counter studied it, then darted his gaze up at me. He quickly dismissed me, instead moving to study Deacon and Kit. Given both of their surprising eyes and intimidating stances, it wasn’t a shock that he’d peg the two of them as the bigger threats.
The man nodded and gestured toward a door at the back of the shop. “Back there. They’re already waiting.”
I nodded back, then headed toward where he’d indicated.
Kit went first, moving past me to twist the handle. It placed me between Deacon and him again, ensuring that if someone surprised us, the men would take the brunt of the attack.
I might have been upset by the behavior before, but I’d accepted that different people had different skills. I couldn’t take a hit as well as the two of them, but I could do a hell of a lot of damage so long as I could stay on my feet.