Chapter 19

Harder, and harder still. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a demand; it was him taking charge of her, taking control. And in the blink of an eye she was controlled, helpless in his arms, her own twining around his neck, tasting salt from her tears as their lips devoured each other’s and the flaring bright energy in her, his energy pouring into her, threatened to send her over the edge before anything even happened.

His lips left hers to travel down her throat, kissing, biting. His fingers squeezed her ribs almost hard enough to hurt. “Please, bryaela. Please.”

She wanted to say yes. Would have wanted to say yes even if his hand hadn’t slid up under her shirt and found her breast, even if his mouth hadn’t found her earlobe and was sucking on it the way he knew she loved.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because he’d lied to her; no matter what his reasons or how sensible they were, he’d kept something that important from her. She couldn’t because asking her to give up her job and her show would have been different if he hadn’t presented it as a requirement.

But those were incidentals. She could have gotten over them. What she couldn’t get over was the idea that he’d actually considered marrying someone else. He’d actually thought, even for a moment, about taking another woman into his bed, making another woman the mother of his children. She couldn’t get over the way he’d spoken of her giving up her job as if it was nothing but refused even to consider giving up his.

Of course it made more sense financially for him to keep his. He wasn’t lying about how much more money he made than she did; she had a box full of diamond jewelry and several stamps in her passport that attested to that, not to mention the other things, things he bought because he was thinking of her, or he thought she’d like them, or whatever other reason he’d come up with.

But he hadn’t even considered it. Hadn’t even paid her the respect of pretending to consider it. Hadn’t even attempted to work out some kind of compromise, to discuss it. As if her work meant nothing, was just playacting she did while waiting for some man to sweep her off her feet.

Too bad that was exactly what had happened. And too bad she couldn’t let him do it again.

All of this passed through her mind in a flash, while his lips found hers again, searingly hot, almost driving her few coherent thoughts away. Without her realizing it, her hands had found his bare skin under his shirt, the smooth, strong expanse of his back, the row of sgaegas—little spikes—down his spine.

Those sgaegas were what he’d shown her to convince her that he was really a demon. And she’d touched them, and her body had gone hot and shivery, and suddenly she wasn’t kissing him anymore because she was crying too hard.

“You lied to me.” The words choked her; she pushed him away, and it felt as if she’d ripped something out of her chest. “All this time you kept this from me, you didn’t tell me. How can I trust you? How can you act like my job is nothing?”

“I don’t think it’s nothing.” She could feel his eyes on her, pleading with her, but she refused to meet them. “But it’s too dangerous, it’s—”

“If it’s too dangerous,” she said, her voice shaking, “then it’s been dangerous all along. You said yourself, whoever’s after me now might be after me because of you. And you never mentioned it. You let me be in danger all this—”

“No! God, no, it’s—”

“Can you promise me that? Can you swear that just being with you, just seeing you, didn’t put me in any danger? That someone isn’t trying to kill me right now because of you, and it has nothing to do with my job or anything else?”

The room was so cold. His chest was warm, she knew, the way he always was, the kind of warmth she could curl into, the kind that would never fade.

But she couldn’t do it. All she could think of were lies and betrayals and the idea that everyone had known but her, that they’d all been conspiring to keep it hidden, that she’d looked like a fool to everyone.

The idea that he’d known she might be in danger and had still not told her.

“No.” He took another step back. “No, I suppose I can’t.”

The pale green carpet had a subtle pattern to it; she hadn’t noticed it before. Now it swirled at her feet, blurred with her tears, became nothing more than a fuzzy wash of color as her eyes lost focus. They stood there, a few feet apart, so close she could have reached him in a few steps.

She’d never felt so alone in her life.

He cleared his throat. Paused. Did it again. “So what are we doing, Meg. I don’t . . . What do you want to do?”

It wasn’t a matter of what she wanted to do. She wanted to take his hand and go to bed. She wanted him to sit down so she could curl up in his lap and feel, just one more time, totally cared for. Totally understood and approved of.

But she wanted more than that out of life too. So she said, in a voice that didn’t sound at all like her own, “I think I should get my own room. I don’t think I can do this. I can’t trust you anymore.”

He made a small sound. She couldn’t look at him to determine if it was a laugh or . . . something else. She didn’t think she could stand knowing. “No, you stay here. I’ll have one of the boys come later for my clothes. Unless you want me to pack now.”

“No. I’ll get my own room. I can get my own, you know. I have my own money, I don’t need yours.” It was a low blow, and she knew it; she saw him twitch out of the corner of her eye. “I’m going to go now.”

This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be actually happening. She glanced at the clock; half an hour had passed. Half an hour, and her life had fallen apart into sharp, horrible little pieces.

“Okay. Okay, then. I’ll . . . I’ll have them bring your things.”

She walked toward the door, every cell in her body screaming to stop. To turn around, to run back to him. She loved him. Surely they could work this out. Couldn’t they work it out? How could this be happening?

How could he have considered marrying someone else? How could he have even considered it?

She paused in the doorway for a second. He stood where she’d left him; his eyes looked damp. She quickly skipped over them. The late-afternoon light streaming through the windows caught his dark, shiny hair, the sharp bones of his face, and the almost hawklike nose. She loved those bones. Loved that face. Loved him, fuck, what—

But he’d lied. Not about unimportant things but about their future. And she couldn’t accept that, couldn’t forgive him, at least not yet, if ever.

She closed the door.

She stood for a second staring at it, listening to the sound of it closing over and over again in her head. Then she made her way down the hall on legs she couldn’t feel and called the elevator for the lobby.

“Megan?”

The gentle tapping on the door was like a hammer bludgeoning her skull.

“Megan? Can I come in?”

Tera. Megan lifted her aching head and tried to find the door; her eyes, emptied of tears, were so dry her lids felt sticky when she blinked, and her vision was blurry.

“Yes, come in.” Her throat was sore; no big surprise, considering she’d barely managed to get through the endless paperwork of getting herself a room and made it up there—a nondescript hole on the seventh floor—before being messily, horribly sick. Her wonderful stomach struck again.

Her fumbling fingers finally grasped the lock. Turning it felt like lifting a thousand-pound weight, but she managed it and stepped back.

Tera held up a white paper bag. “I brought you some fries.”

Ugh. “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.”

The room wasn’t a suite, just a typical hotel room like Elizabeth Reid’s—bed jutting out from one wall, small desk, TV. It was still the Bellreive, so still larger and nicer than a budget hotel, but the difference . . . She didn’t want to think about that. Or about that suite. Or especially about who was in it.