Chapter Nineteen
LUCIEN TENSED UNTIL EVERY RIDGE OF his abdominals stood out.
So helpful of him not to put on a shirt. So, so nice of him to distract me with a sudden orgasm when I didn’t stand a hope in hell of surviving this.
I ignored the call, trying to figure out how not to die. “Dillon is—”
Immediately, the phone flashed with another attempt.
Dillon wouldn’t stop.
I knew that from prior experience. Whenever I’d gone offline and forced him to track me down using my sporadic use of my credit cards, I’d get a painful scolding whenever he caught me.
Usually, I’d accept his call, put it on speaker, and tuck the phone under a pillow, so I didn’t have to subject myself to the full volume of my bodyguard’s wrath.
Technically I was his boss, yet somehow, I always came away feeling like his little sister. A badly behaved, runaway little sister who had to grovel to a very angry, very big brother so he wouldn’t maim her.
Exhaling heavily, I held up my phone and showed it to Lucien. “This is a cellphone.”
“I know what a goddamn cellphone is! What I want to know is why a man named Dillon is calling you incessantly on it. Is there something you haven’t told me?” Fury sparked in his abyssally dark eyes. “Are you with someone?”
There were a lot of things I hadn’t told him.
Only a few hours ago, we’d been in Cinderkeep and keeping my secrets was easy. Not that they were secrets but...how had this unravelled so fast?
Tossing me off his lap, he shot to his feet and raked both hands through his hair. “Who the fuck is Dillon?!”
“Keep your voice down.” I threw a look at the door just as my phone vibrated and shivered, becoming as angry as Lucien.
My chest ached as I tried to salvage the meagre trust he’d finally given me. “Dillon is...my bodyguard.”
“Your bodyguard?” His eyes widened as he dropped his hands in disbelief. “Since when do you have a bodyguard?”
I stayed as calm as I could. “Since I was born.”
“What?”
“Dillon is my third bodyguard since I was a child. My parents—”
“Why?” He cut me off with a growl. “Why would you need a bodyguard?”
I frowned, not understanding the question.
Why else did someone pay to be watched and stalked all the time?
“To protect me, of course.” I shrugged, flinching as the call dropped off only for a new one to begin.
God, how many times would Dillon try and how badly would he make me pay when I finally answered?
“To protect you?” Lucien went fatally still. “What...from me?” His eyes smouldered, burning through the faint scarlet ringing his normally black pupils. “Because of what I just did? Because I somehow set the wall on fire and melted the tap?”
“Tap? What tap?”
He choked on a snarl. “Do you need protecting because there’s something about me that’s...wrong?”
His tone, his fear...it launched me to my feet.
Everything inside me wanted to hug him. To prove that regardless if it was him or a freak accident, I wasn’t afraid of him. I might not know his favourite colour or food or song but...I knew him.
I knew he wouldn’t hurt me...or at least, not intentionally.
“Dillon has guarded me since I was twelve. He’s trying to get hold of me because I’ve been missing for almost seven weeks and his literal job description is to keep me safe.
I’ve done a terrible job in the past of letting him do that, so that’s why he’s calling so much.
He won’t stop until I answer but...he’s just a friend and nothing more. You don’t have to—”
“Tell him you’re mine.” The snarl tore out of him, dousing me in goosebumps. “Tell him you’re not going anywhere. I forbid it.”
“W-What?”
Beneath his explosive fury, raw misery lurked. His chest heaved. His fists shook. He looked as if he’d gone from finally letting down his guard, to thinking everything about me was yet another trap.
“It’s okay,” I murmured, unable to stand the betrayal in his eyes. “I’m still the same person. I’m still on your side.”
“My side?” he chuckled blackly. “And what side is that?”
“The right side,” I blurted. “The good side.”
“You think I’m good? How many women have I killed again?”
“Fine. I meant the bad side. I’m firmly on the bad side.”
“Ah...” He smiled thinly. “So I’m the villain now?”
“No, of course not. Stop twisting my—”
“I’m an idiot. All this time I thought you understood my need for revenge, but you’ve been secretly trying to get away from me.” He balled his hands. “You lied to me.”
My phone kept on ringing. My head kept on pounding. “I never lied to you. Not once.”
“Then tell me how you really feel!” he hissed. “Give me the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“Are you on my side or not?”
“I just told you. Yes, I’m on your side. Besides, how can you even ask that?” Hurt pinched my heart. “Especially after everything—”
“Answer the fucking question, Rook!”
“I just did!”
“Then why do I feel like you’re about to betray me like everyone else?”
Whisper shot to his feet and went to his master, wrapping his long tail around Lucien as if holding him back from attacking me.
My heart skipped as I clutched my buzzing phone and tried to give him what he needed to hear.
“I will never betray you, Lucien. I will always be on your side.” I licked my lips and added an important caveat.
“As long as you don’t hurt innocent people and don’t harm me, then I will never stop being on your side.
You have my full support to seek vengeance on those who did this to you and your family. ”
His fury faded a little as his shoulders sagged. His hand landed on Whisper’s head, his fingers fumbling with the panther’s ears. He looked so unsure and in such pain, he reached into my chest and ruined me.
I moved to go to him, but his chin tipped up and he sighed heavily. “Are you sure? Are you sure you can even stand to look at me after what happened here tonight?”
My gaze flickered to the barbecued wall.
He followed my stare, shuddering just once. “What if I lose control again? What if I turn out to be a worse monster than them?”
My phone kept buzzing and I didn’t know what to say.
“What if I’m exactly what all those women said I am?” he whispered. “That my very existence is an apocalypse waiting to happen...will you still love me then?”
Love him?
He choked.
We both froze.
That frightening little word fell to the floor and exploded around our feet. A word that came with so much danger and depth...
But...it seemed like I did, didn’t it?
How else did I explain how I felt about him?
How else could I ever go this far or accept so many unexplainable things?
“Lucien, I—”
“Don’t,” he hissed, cutting me off with a swipe of his hand. “Don’t say anything.”
The urge to tell him how I felt came strong, but a dam formed in my throat. An obstruction made of fear and shyness. He was the first and only person I’d cared about since losing my parents. I would do absolutely anything in my power to keep him safe, all while knowing I was absolutely useless.
Especially now I knew how different he was.
How valuable he was to the men who wanted him.
“If I didn’t have feelings for you...how else could I have self-medicated with your blood while you were in the shower? How else could I bring myself to drink your very life-force if I didn’t feel connected to you above everyone?”
His body heat buffeted me like a fallen comet. “What?”
“I drank what you gave me this morning.”
He stiffened as if my admission that I’d willingly ingested his blood—the very blood he’d had to force down my throat before—affected him on a primordial level.
“So you see...I trust you, even after what happened,” I said softly. “I’m not afraid of you and I’m not going to betray you—”
“You were in pain?” he cut in, his voice full of gravel and smoke.
“I was but...now, I’m not. Thanks to you.”
His shirtless chest came alive with patches of heat as if the subject of the conversation turned into molten magma in his veins.
I couldn’t look away as his eyes gleamed, embers replacing his pupils. The longer we stared, the more the air arced with electricity. I could almost taste power bleeding off him, feathering out to lick across my skin and rattle the windows in their frames.
Whisper whipped to look at the windows, baring his teeth at the shivering glass.
“Eh, Lucien...?” I trembled as another wash of ridiculously hot energy blasted from him.
The curtains quivered.
Red shadows danced over his chest—
Whisper snarled, looking back to Lucien and nipping his arm. Lucien coughed and stumbled backward as Whisper bit a little too sharp.
The spell broke.
The windows stopped rattling and the air temperature returned to normal instead of blistering like the sun.
God, now what?
What the hell just happened?
Who the hell is he?
And why wasn’t I running like I should?
“Are you...” I swallowed hard, trying so hard to pretend all of this was normal. “Are you okay?”
Raking both hands over his face, his shoulders sagged. Dropping his arms, he caught my eyes and slowly shook his head.
“You’re not okay?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t know?” I whispered.
His fingers strayed to the vitalsync core that was dull and dead over his heart.
My phone hurled itself around in my hand, reaching its furious crescendo.
Lucien’s gaze locked on it and everything he was feeling shut down. His unreadable mask slipped back into place as he crossed his arms, and ordered, “Answer it.”