Chapter 26 #2
Hearing his voice was like hearing him speak again for the first time, and I felt myself soften as I looked at him, my hands trembling slightly as I took him in.
“You really came home,” I replied, my voice betraying just how much I had missed him. “I did not think it would ever happen.”
Warren got to his feet, resplendent in height and beauty, wiping his face with his palms. “I—No, you are mistaken. I came to New Orleans on business.”
I took a step forward, tilting my head. “And yet, here you are. Home.”
“This is no longer home.”
“Then why are you here?”
“You called!” he replied, exasperated. Without realizing, he had stepped beyond the threshold of the apartment and was mere feet away from me.
I moved closer still, closing some of the distance between us. “I have been calling you for years, yet you did not answer. Worse, in fact, you blocked your mind. Why did you answer now?”
Warren’s chest heaved as he stared me down, though I could feel the effect I was having on him. With his guard lowered, he was unable to hide how he was feeling as well as before. A carnal part of him wanted to launch at me in the same way I wished to devour him, making up for lost time.
“I don’t know,” he replied earnestly, sighing and running his fingers through his hair. “Curiosity, perhaps. I wanted to see how much had changed.”
I let silence pass for a few moments, electricity charging the air between us, before I nodded and stepped back. Warren sighed again, this time partly in relief as the distance cleared some of the lust-filled fog in our brains.
“Very well. Look around.” I bowed at the waist, gesturing for him to enter properly.
He said nothing in return, putting as much space between us as possible as he walked past me. I watched as his eyes roamed around the dismal apartment, painful memories resurfacing.
“I cannot believe I lived here for so long. It seems so…depressing.”
I let out a small chuckle, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Warren suppress a smile at the sound. “It seems time spent with Maggie has helped you embrace certain luxuries.”
“Lena has a certain way of living that I had to become accustomed to, certainly. But this place,” he said, something akin to sadness or pity in his voice, “it is a reminder of the loneliness I used to feel.”
“You no longer feel lonely?” I asked, unable to help goading him. I would take any sort of emotion from him over this poised, regulated version. I wanted Warren, not the facade he was offering.
“No, I do not feel lonely.”
The lie rolled easily off his tongue, though I could feel the sting of it through our bond.
He was fighting hard to keep his thoughts locked away, but I never needed the bond to be able to read Warren’s thoughts.
He always presented himself as an open book to me, and even now, I could read every page of him without assistance. I had mastered the art in learning him.
“Must we lie to each other after all this time? Surely we owe each other more than that, love.”
Warren pursed his lips, swiveling around to read the titles of the books I had lying around. “Do you think we owe each other anything? I feel that we have loved and suffered enough. What is the point in being indebted?”
“I do not consider my love for you akin to suffering or debt, but perhaps I have broken you so much that it is like that for you.” Saying the words aloud grieved me somewhat, knowing there was truth to them.
Loving Warren was a blessing to me, something that came easily and would never be a regret.
But for Warren, loving me had always come with sadness and pain.
“That is not…I did not say that,” Warren snapped, irritation in his voice. “I am not some broken doll because I loved you, Levette.”
Loved. Ha, that was laughable. My beloved could lie to himself, but the truth was pulsing down the bond between us, tendrils of love that could not be severed no matter how hard he tried.
Very well, if he wanted to play that way…I would indulge. A good game of cat and mouse always enticed me.
“Dolls are for playing with, are they not? If you are not a broken doll, does that still make you a doll nonetheless?”
Warren shook his head, groaning. “I am not here to play games with you, Levette.”
I took a deliberate step towards him, closing the narrow gap between us. His Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed was enough incentive to continue. Warren had always been one to need coaxing, chased a little before he unleashed.
“You said yourself that you do not know why you are here. Could it not be that you missed this madness?”
“Stop this nonsense. I should not have come.”
He made to storm past me, but I grabbed his wrist, halting him in place. Growling lowly, Warren’s eyes flashed with a dark warning that made my skin tingle. He should have known better than to try to assert caution my way—it only added fuel to the fire that was always burning for Warren.
“And yet you are here. With me. Will you really leave again?”
I used his wrist to pull him closer until our faces were barely apart.
With our bodies flush against each other, Warren’s eyes met mine and I saw the moment his resolve caved.
I crashed my lips against his, relishing in the way he sighed like he had been waiting for it.
Had I been a better man, kinder in spirit, I would have kissed him tenderly to show him how much I had missed him.
Instead, I was harsh in touch, roughly pinning him against the wall, unleashing some of the anger I had swallowed for a decade at being abandoned.
“This is a terrible idea,” Warren muttered, shoving me off to put distance between us. “We cannot do this.”
“According to who?” I countered. “Your body missed me, even if you will not admit that your heart has, too.”
Warren laughed dryly, but I could see the turmoil in his eyes, the torment he was fighting when he looked at me. “You want me to admit it, for what? Does my pain make this easier for you?”
I moved quickly behind him, pressing my lips to the shell of his ear.
He shivered at the small contact, and it took everything in me to keep the feral part of myself contained.
I wanted nothing more than to prove why he should not leave me again, but I would not manipulate him like that.
It would be his choice and his body’s reaction if anything proceeded between us.
“Non, mon cher, it would simply be nice to know that it has pained you as greatly as I to be apart.”
Spinning around, Warren placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back. Although I could not speak it aloud, it made me somewhat proud to see how he had mastered his vampire strength. He had been a quick learner, as I had expected.
“Why do you live here? Your scent is everywhere, which means you have been residing here. Why, Levette?”
It was a fair question, and one I had anticipated him asking.
I had not, however, expected to answer so honestly in return.
“I ached for you. Every day we were apart, I missed you more than I could handle. Being here allowed me to have a part of you, to feel close to you, without it being unbearable.”
Warren was silent for a minute or two as he looked between the apartment and me. He began to shake his head, lifting his arms up to gesture around us.
“No, Levette. This was a way to punish yourself…over and over again, every single day for the last ten years. A way to remind yourself of the bad, of the reason I left. Of the reasons I tried to…” His voice broke, and I was surprised that tears pinched at my eyes, threatening to leak out.
Warren always had a way of breaking down the tougher parts of me and leaving me exposed.
“Mon amour…It was not intentional—”
Warren cut me off, his hand held up between us. “You have been torturing yourself for a decade, and you have made me an accomplice to your pain.”
I tried to close the distance between us again, but Warren stepped away. This time, I could feel the pain he was radiating. My choices, once again, had hurt him unimaginably.
Before I could speak, Warren began to talk again, a hint of anger in his words.
“My struggle all these years was, in part, because of you. Our love is a cruel and toxic thing, Levette. And now I find out that you have used our time apart to wallow, to be wicked to yourself, and I was part of that. Do you think it is fair that now I shall have that on my conscience, too?” He grew quiet, and at last, when he spoke again, it was enough to pierce my heart.
“How much more will you hurt me and call it love?”
I stared at him for a second in quiet disbelief.
He was not wrong; I had hurt him many times over.
But what my darling love forgot was that in the process, he had also hurt me.
He had chosen to take the ultimate end, and the only reason he was still standing before me was because of that tiny little witch, Maggie.
Furthermore, Warren seemed to forget that I could feel him through our bond.
And while there was truth to his words, he was lying to himself and me.
He was using it to create distance between us, and I would not allow that.
My resolve finally snapped, and I threw my hands up. “I am sorry. I will be sorry for the rest of my pitiful, immortal life, Warren. J'en ai tellement marre de ca! You accept nothing I tell you. Tell me now if my pursuit is futile. Tell me you do not love me.”
Warren rolled his eyes. “You love to play the victim, Levette. Why don’t we make this all about you?”
I growled low in my throat, baring my fangs.
He was playing a dangerous game. “Allez vous faire foutre avec ca! What happened to you was a mistake! One I will forever be remorseful over, but a mistake nonetheless. You are upset with me for punishing myself, yet is that not what you have been doing to me all these years?”
“I was trying to heal! It had nothing to do with you!”