When his lips touched mine and the spark flew, I could read what he was thinking. He wanted all the same things I had and more. I hadn’t been able to do that with anyone but Regan before, and I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew I wanted to learn.
“Come with me,” he said in a husky whisper.
He held out his hand for me to take and I did. I let him lead me up the small flight of stairs and to the end of the hall. He didn’t turn on the light when we entered the room, but I could see what he was doing. His shirt came off before he reached the bed and as he sat to wait for me, I could see him wiggle slowly from side to side. He was vulnerable in that moment and I could have broken him or gone to him with as much passion as he had shown.
I wanted to do the second option with all I had in me, but Regan’s face flashed before me with every step I took as I moved closer to Dylan. One look or smell of me and Regan would know what I had been doing all night. It was one thing he had on me that I hadn’t gotten good at. He could have snuck around on me and I don’t think I would have known the difference. It was a thought that I pushed away every time we hunted. I had seen him with other women before, but it was always with me there and I was the one he kissed and was gentle with. The others, they were nothing but toys to him.
I wasn’t sure what Dylan was to me yet, but I would have to figure it out fast if I was going to save my own skin.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next morning
Regan was already home when I snuck in at almost dawn. I had a few minutes to spare before the sun came up. Closing the door softly behind me, I jumped when I heard footsteps coming from the dining room.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
“I was out seducing our play toy,” I answered and moved closer to him. Running my fingers along the front of his button-up shirt, I gasped when his hand firmly clasped mine and pulled it away from him.
“Alyssa, I hate games and you know it. What is really going on?”
“Nothing. I told you where I was and what I was doing.”
“How far did you go with him?”
“A kiss. We only kissed.”
It wasn’t a lie. I stopped it from going any farther than that. I was terrified of what Regan would have done to us if we would have tried anything. I’d seen his temper more than one time in our hundred plus years together. One thing I had never done was cheat on him and he knew it. Even though I wanted to see what it would have been like with Dylan, I wasn’t going to do anything that would get myself killed.
“Your mind is loud tonight, but I can’t read it. I don’t understand why I can’t read it,” he grumbled.
“Maybe because you need to learn to trust me. I have never done anything to make you think you couldn’t.”
“No. You haven’t, but this feels different to me.”
“Regan, you are the one I am with. I am hunting and training. That’s all.”
I dared to move closer to him once more and he didn’t push me away. He kissed the top of my head and left his chin resting on it for a second before he spoke.
“You smell like him and it’s making me nauseous. You smell like meat too. Go wash up before you join me in the bedroom.”
“Okay, Regan.”
I took longer in the shower than I should have, but my mind was racing. Regan was lying naked in the bed in the next room over, and yet I couldn’t get my mind off of the way Dylan sat there in his vulnerable human state and laid himself out for me. Regan wasn’t wrong about a lot of things that night. My mind was racing in every way but where it should have been. Hunting like we were had always brought us closer together. That time it felt like it was ripping us apart and, while he was still there with me, I almost felt a sense of grief as if I had already lost him. There was an invisible wall that had sprouted up between us and I knew I was the one who had built it. The problem was, I had no clue how to tear it back down – or if I wanted to.
The fact Regan was having a hard time reading my mind was another sign of our separation. He could read me even before the first time we had been together. The fact he was struggling that night told me it wasn’t all in my head. Dylan was quickly making his way inside of me and his grip was strong. I had to figure out a way to back it down before I lost everything and possibly my life. If Regan even thought I was thinking about Dylan in the shower as my hand slid between my legs, he would kill me and then race off to kill him. Mine would be fast, but Regan would have taken his time with Dylan and made him regret the day he ever spoke a word to me.
That scared me more than anything Regan could have done to me. I knew what I was bringing into my life with the tangled web I was weaving. Dylan was still clueless and was an innocent victim to our games. He would have died anyway at my hands, but I wouldn’t have made it as painful as I knew Regan would. More times than not, Regan saw me as his property, and he was very protective of what was his. It was one thing I hated about him. I didn’t want to be his property. I wanted to be the mate he promised me I would be to him.
When I finally climbed out of the shower and opened the door, I was shocked when I ran smack into a mountain. Regan stood there, arms crossed over his chest, with a scowl on his normally relaxed face.
“Something’s wrong,” he said without moving more than his jaw to speak. “You never make me wait that long and you smell like you’ve been playing without me. What is going on?”
“Nothing. I was thinking about you and I got excited. Come on, Regan. Don’t be like this today. We haven’t seen each other for more than a few minutes since the hunt started. I know you have to spend all your time with her to make it work, and I have to with mine, but when we can be together, can’t it just be us?”
It wasn’t a total lie, but even the few parts that were ripped me up inside. I had never lied or hidden anything from him before, but that, I had to. I wasn’t even sure what, if anything, it was and until I did, it was better to keep him in the dark. If it was nothing more than a passing infatuation, it would pass quickly, and life would go back to normal with Regan being none the wiser for the way another man made me feel for a brief moment.
“Maybe that’s all it is. This hunt seems to be taking up more of our time than they used to.”
“Because these humans become shallower as the years go by. It isn’t our fault we have to work harder, but please, when we can be here, can we just be here?” I begged for him to drop it because I wasn’t ready to face anything that might tear us apart.
“You’re right. Come here.”
He opened his arms, and I ran to them. His arms around me relaxed me for a moment and I remembered how it felt at first with Regan all those years ago. He was so dark and mysterious. I loved learning all I could about him and letting him learn about me. There wasn’t anything we hid from each other and nothing was off topic to talk about. He was the first man I had been with and the only one I had ever made love to. The others were at his request and only a form of foreplay. Things with us had never gone stale, but there was a different electricity between us than before. It was almost a forced or fake spark where a real one used to be.
It made my heart heavy to think I might be losing him and even more that I could be the one causing it. There would be a heavy price to pay if I went down the road my feet were pointing toward. And I had to make sure I was willing to pay it before I started too far down the slippery slope I was teetering on.