“I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry I brought that insecurity back into your life. Your history has created the person you are today, someone I happen to care a great deal about. Would you be the man I’m trying so hard not to fall in love with if you’d been born with a different face?”
He’d been about to take a drink, but he put his beer mug down before it got to his lips, and he sat back. “You’re trying not to fall in love with me?”
“I don’t seem to be doing a good job of it.” I breathed in. “Why are you upset?”
“If I’m someone you could love, and you know we work together, what’s wrong with me? Why don’t you want me in your life?”
“Nothing is wrong with you. I’m the one who’s all fucked up.”
The waitress brought our desserts and talked to us a few moments. When she left, I focused on Dementor and ignored the slice of chocolate decadence on the table before me. “I thought I loved Able.” I shook my head. “No, that isn’t right. I loved him, but I couldn’t see how unhealthy the relationship was, or that he didn’t return the feelings. He cared for me, but he was still waiting to meet his true love. I was just a placeholder until he found her, and I now realize he took a whole bunch of other women for a spin, each time hoping she might be the one. I was often put out of sight and out of mind while he did that, or only requested when his latest plaything had other plans, I guess.” I shrugged. “The point is that I need to figure out how to fall in love with someone and make sure it’s healthy going both ways.”
I smelled anger and didn’t understand until he spoke. “I regret the asshole got himself killed in the battle, because now I can’t beat the ever lovin’ fuck out of him.”
“You’d do that to the Owl King?”
The muscles in his jaw rippled. “I would, and it might get me kicked out of the MC if I created a big enough political storm, but I’d do it anyway.”
“Mad Dog would kick you out?”
“Fuck no. He might help me do it, which would get him kicked out too, and I can’t imagine my brothers would vote me out, but the national organization probably couldn’t afford to be at odds with the owls.” He rubbed at the short, recently trimmed beard on his jaw. “It’s possible they’d back me, but we aren’t supposed to take it upon ourselves to pick fights with powerful organizations. Even if I left my cut at home, I’d still be a representative of the club, and the blowback would hit us all. By supernatural law, you were there of your own accord after Sophia negotiated for you, so there’s a good chance I’d be on my own with it.” The muscles around his eyes tensed and narrowed. “Wouldn’t matter. I’d still go after him.”
“Kirsten asked me if I thought Sophia should’ve insisted I leave, but I’d have resented Sophia and probably put myself into another bad situation. I needed to learn this lesson the hard way. I was addicted to the power exchange, and I had to hit rock bottom and claw myself out before I could even begin to put myself in a position of power.”
“What do you need from me?”
He was still angry and hurt, but he seemed to be trying not to be. I wanted to assure him it was going to be okay, but I wasn’t sure it would be. I needed to be honest, but I tried to soften it as much as possible.
“Long term? I’m not sure. I want you in my life, but I’m not ready to commit to you and you alone, so we’ll have to figure out how that looks. Short term…” I took a breath and asked before I lost my nerve. “Will you sleep with me tonight? Just hold me and sleep. No sex tonight or in the morning. Just conversation and sleep and then breakfast. I’ll need to leave the house at nine twenty because my first class is at ten.”
“If we can stop by my apartment so I can get some shorts to sleep in, and if you wear shorts and a shirt, or sweatpants and a shirt, I’d love to hold you all night.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dementor
Sleeping with her without fucking her was easier than I expected, but it was still an exercise in self-control.
And yet, I’d do it every night I was off work for a month if it would bring her back to me. Holding her in my arms while she was totally relaxed, talking and snuggling and just plain comfortable with each other. The intimacy fed my soul.
Perhaps there was something for me to learn here, too. Intimacy didn’t have to equal sex.
I asked to see her schedule while we ate breakfast. She had oatmeal with a ton of honey and cinnamon in it, along with about a half a stick of butter. She also had eggs and bacon. I had the eggs and bacon with steak on the side. Oatmeal isn’t my thing.
She had a legal class, a graphic arts class, an ethics class, her time interning, and a business writing and speech class. Twenty-four hours plus lab time. “Damn, they don’t make your final semester easy, do they?”
“The only criminal justice classes I had left for my major were the legal class and ethics class. Well, and the capstone intern thing. The graphic arts is for my minor, and the writing and speech class is an elective. It isn’t that bad.”
“You have lunch on Thursday’s at two? Can I meet you somewhere? Or I can pick you up from class and take you somewhere, if you’d rather.”
“I’d like that. I have two hours between classes, but I usually eat and then look over the study materials for my ethics class before I walk in, so we won’t have the whole two hours together. If you pick me up outside my legal class and drop me off outside the humanities building, we’ll have around an hour and twenty minutes. Well, unless I have a test, and then we won’t have as long.”
My insides relaxed. I’d been sure she was going to turn me down, but I’d had to ask anyway. “There’s a nice seafood restaurant just south of campus.” She loved shrimp.
“You’d be happier with the barbecue place a few blocks over.”
I touched her hand. “You don’t always have to consider my preferences, Ember. Relationships are a give-and-take. Sometimes we focus on my favorites, sometimes we focus on yours, sometimes we find a happy middle. This week, I’m focusing on your favorites.”
She took a breath and let it out. Something in her psyche seemed to settle. I don’t know how I knew, or even if I was imagining it.
“Thank you. You’re right, of course.”
I had to ask. “Something just changed. Can you explain what I’m sensing?”
“Kirsten and Aaron have both stressed that I have to let people treat me as special and treasured and valued and whatever. I felt all of those things while I was with Able, but they both said it was more about what I did for him that he valued than—” She rolled her eyes. “Damn, I’m tired of talking about him. What changed is that I finally get it. You want to make me happy in the same way I want to make you happy.”
Ember
Three weeks later, and he took me to lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we went out on a date Sunday afternoon each week. He works Friday and Saturday night, but he’s off on Sunday and Monday. During the week, his days are free but he works nights. Even if we became a thing, he wasn’t going to take over my life.