“That is the truth.”
Her eyes narrowed, studying me. “I don’t think it is. You’ve been trained to—”
“That training is gone.”
She gave me another sad smile. “Are you so sure?”
“I’m sure that I want to make amends for what I’ve done.”
“There’s nothing to make amends—”
“Please,” I snarled, my hand dropping from her hair and balling by my side. “All I’m asking is...” I looked at the ground, swallowing a harsh laugh. I hadn’t thought this out. I hadn’t rehearsed this, but now that certain words filled my mouth, I heard how ridiculous they’d sound. How stupidly cliché and preposterous.
“What?” she whispered. “What are you asking for?”
It was my turn to shrug, temper tangling with all my flaws. “You to trust me. Just like you said I could trust you.”
Her eyes widened, the truth written all over her face. “You said I shouldn’t trust you.”
“And you shouldn’t.”
“Then why ask—?”
“Just for tonight. Trust me to do the right thing...just for tonight.”
She frowned, no doubt going over what else I’d said in the library. How I’d begged her to kill me before I could make another mistake. How I’d practically beaten it into her that she could never trust a man who couldn’t control his own mind. A man she’d predicted would one day snap and hurt her far worse than anything he’d done before. There was no way she should trust me.
Of course, she couldn’t.
What a moronic thing to ask.
I laughed under my breath. “Forget it. I only meant...” I sighed and looked at the stars. “I want you to feel safe. You’re safe, Gemma...I-I give you my word that I won’t hurt you. Not tonight.”
She nodded once, hearing what I had. Not tonight. She was safe...just for tonight. I couldn’t guarantee all the other days and all the other nights, but for the next few hours before dawn broke, while my mind was stable and completely here, with her, she wouldn’t be molested, bruised, or tormented.
I rolled my eyes, cursing my constant headache. What sort of offer was that? What did that make me when I couldn’t extend that promise because I had no control when sleep claimed me?
Silence thickened between us, and as we stood next to flames with their soft crackle in our ears and starlight above us, I felt as if she saw past all the nightmares I couldn’t face and all the memories I locked up deep inside. She shoved past any connection I might’ve had with my Fable family, elbowed past a childhood I couldn’t remember, and dug deep, deep inside me until she found the core of who I was.
The nucleus that’d given up hope and happiness a long time ago.
She saw me. The eternal me. She didn’t see a man imprisoned with loneliness, not a boy with severe trauma, not even the man I could become thanks to her. She saw past all of that, and I came alive and died beneath her study.
She made my heart revoke me, forsake me, and bow to its new owner.
The air crackled with more than just flame-chewed firewood. It positively blazed with whatever magic had sprung between us, and I couldn’t stand there any longer as separate people.
I had to touch her.
To thank her.
To hide just how much she’d undone me.
Stepping into her, I cupped her cheeks with both palms. “You’re safe.”
She froze with a quick inhale.
Our eyes locked.
Our pulse raced.
“I promise.” I dropped my head and captured her mouth with mine.
She gasped as I kissed her softly.
She trembled in my hands as I groaned at her taste.
I kissed her softer still, turning my head, running my thumbs over her cheekbones, licking at the seam of her lips. “Let me make this right.”
For an awful moment, she kept her mouth pursed, denying me.
“Please...” I kissed her sweetly, feathering affection that made my entire body buckle for more, reining myself in from being cruel. “I need to do this. I need to show you how much you mean to me.”
She moaned and opened for me.
The dark parts of me rejoiced. I deepened the kiss, swift and savage.
Her spine arched as I clutched her close. She didn’t push me away, but she didn’t melt into me either. Her lack of participation and the fact that she hadn’t actively refused me made me worry she’d only agreed out of fear. That even now, even after what’d happened between us, she still expected me to lose myself and leave her at the mercy of my nightmares.
“You’re safe,” I breathed, pulling away, forcing myself to stop.
She blinked, belief and disbelief equal in her stare.
“I’m at your command, Gem.” It took all my willpower to stay slow and gentle. “You only have to tell me, and I’ll stop.” I bowed my head and kissed her again, light and tantalizing. “This time is different. I feel different. I’m different because of you. Thanks to you.” I sucked on her bottom lip. “I want to show you what it could be like between us when there’s no shit, no struggle. I want to know what we could be like. Just us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’D LIVED THROUGH MANY things, yet this...this was the hardest.
I’d always been independent and not afraid of tackling things that scared other people, but right now? Having Kas treat me as if he would gladly plunge a knife into his heart if he so much as said a harsh word terrified me.
It terrified because I wanted so, so much to believe we’d turned a corner. That this was him acknowledging that we couldn’t keep going the way we had. The hating, the arguing, the explosions that always ended up with me hurt and him struggling to understand what he’d done wrong.
He was like a wolf cub, stumbling and growling, alone without a role model to show him the right path. He could be forgiven for his mistakes while slowly coming alive again. It was understandable for someone who’d turned his back on his own kind to fumble.
But what I couldn’t accept was how much this version of him made me feel.
Tonight had been one of the scariest of my life. I’d been taken by force, and ordinarily, any woman who’d lived through that was completely in her right to murder the perpetrator and run straight to the police.
But I couldn’t.
Not just because I was trapped by a chain, but because I’d been infected by insidious feelings that webbed like starlight between us. And it wasn’t just a web. It was deeper than that; it’d slipped beneath our skin and threaded around our hearts.
Our insides matched—I was sure of it.
Both riddled with star-strings, pulsing and glowing, tying us together with no way to get free.
Dammit.
All my life, I’d wanted to feel a tiny fraction of what I did for this messed-up man, and the fact that I could—even after what he’d done—scrambled me up until we were both as fucked up as the other.
“Gem.” He kissed me deeper, his tongue hunting mine. In that delicate moment, he wasn’t a stranger in a forgotten valley, and he wasn’t the beast who’d stolen everything from me. He was just a man—a man I was finding harder and harder to pretend wasn’t made for me.
Every instinct wanted to submit to him. To melt and kiss him back.