Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Greer
I’m touching Sam, and all I can think is how I feel…
Alive.
I should probably be feeling other things, considering the black tendrils coming out of him and all that he’s told me. Things that quite frankly make absolutely no sense, but for some reason, they do.
I don’t think he’s lying, and I don’t think I’m in a coma. If I was, everything wouldn’t feel so real, like how I feel touching him right now. It’s as if an electric current surged straight through my veins, lighting up every inch of me.
Sam stiffens at my touch but doesn’t pull away.
He slowly turns to face me, our hands dropping near our sides.
But now, he holds mine—more like grips it.
His already black eyes look like deep voids.
They aren’t scary, though—they look more like a pool of endless dark galaxies.
I want to swim in them, discover what constellations are hidden within their depths.
A sensation I liken to a cat rubbing up against my leg makes me look at him, and I’m reminded of what I saw before he ran.
He called it his aura—dark tendrils, like tentacles, slithering toward me.
They appear to radiate from his being, a dark halo that spans around his body and creeps out near his feet.
It’s strange, but I can’t say I’m not intrigued or that I don’t want to reach down and touch one, see what it feels like.
“Greer,” Sam says. “I should leave.”
The words leave his mouth, but he doesn’t let go of my hand. “Why?”
“Because.” The veins in his neck strain, and the feeling on my leg dissipates briefly.
My gaze becomes captured in his again, and small lines now crinkle around his eyes.
He’s holding his tendrils back, or at least attempting to, and it’s causing him pain.
The feeling in my gut that wants me to comfort him doesn’t like it.
“Because why, Sam?” I hold his hand tight, and his eyes look down at our now-woven fingers.
“Because, Greer.” His focus returns to me. “You’re you.”
I yank my hand back like I’ve been punched in the gut. Rejection overtakes every good feeling in my body, and I’m reminded of how I felt the first time Kai didn’t kiss me, how I felt when I reminded myself that men—Nephilim—like them wouldn’t want me, anyway.
Now, he’s voicing my insecurity, the one that’s always told me that I’m not good enough, that they’d probably like someone kind and sweet like Avery over a bitter Ice Queen like me who works too much and ruins people’s lives.
The bridge of my nose stings like it did earlier, but before I can stop myself, I do the thing he told me not to do. I turn and run.
Sam’s voice cuts through the quiet of the bookstore. “Greer, no!”
I don’t listen, my feet picking up speed. My hand is on the door to push it open when one of the shadow-tentacles wraps around my leg and stops me.
Fear and the sensation of needy desire fill me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, flipping my stomach and turning my nipples hard. Damn, body, we’re running—we’re upset, remember?
“Greer!” His baritone voice zips up my spine, the warning in it not making my situation any better.
The tentacle tightens around my ankle, and my breath catches in my lungs. It’s not lost on me that I’ve gotten off to a fantasy like this before, which doesn’t help my arousal at all. Differing emotions swirl inside of me, and it’s hard to make sense of them.
“Please.” His voice is closer now. “Let me explain what I meant.”
The grip on my ankle recedes, and I don’t remember making the decision to turn and face him again, but I do. My back presses against the door, the wood cool from the frigid winter air outside, reminding me that I was in such a hurry to leave that I left my coat, scarf, and purse.
Sam takes two tentative steps toward me, his shoulders back and stiff as the shadows swirl around him. I’m mesmerized by them, and the desire to reach out and touch one gets stronger.
“Greer.” Sam’s voice is pained. I look into his eyes, the depths of them swirling with confusion and sadness. They’re a mirror to my own.
I swallow, managing to find the ability to speak. “I understood perfectly what you meant.”
“I don’t think you did.”
“How could I misinterpret it?” Anger rises in my chest, replacing a bit of the lust.
He hesitantly takes another step closer. By the grind of his teeth, I know he’s trying to fight it, but just like how my body turned toward his of its own accord, it’s as if he can’t help himself.
“It’s not because of who you are.”
“Really? Because you said Elysian Pines brought me here because I needed help. You’ve seen my past and present. I’m not exactly liked or a good person.”
“What are you saying?”
“You have every right to not want me for me. I’m not exactly the kind of woman men desire long term nor the type they bring home for Christmas.”
The memory of James breaking up with me sends pain lancing through my lungs, my heart feeling as if someone has it in their palm and is squeezing it hard.
“Emotions are a liability,” I say under my breath. “Control is—”
“Greer.” Sam speaks to me in a steady timbre, cutting off my mantra. My eyes sting, and I hate it. I hate not feeling in control.
The tentacle-like shadow wraps around my ankle, and this time, I feel a heated warmth coming from it. The sensation is grounding, soothing somehow, like whatever this aura is creates energy to ease my mind.
I shut my eyes to get rid of the sting. When I open them, Sam is close enough that I feel the heat of his body.
“You’re wrong,” he says. “Emotions are not a liability—they are power. Control.”
I stare into his eyes for a long beat. “Then why are you afraid of yours, too?”
He blinks as if I’ve stunned him, jolted a brand-new idea into his head that was never there before.
“You wouldn’t touch me yesterday. You were watching me at the rink then left. Now you tried to leave. You’re running from whatever it is you’re feeling, or am I wrong?”
My gut flips and tingles, my sadness turning into something else. The hunger of lust and desire returns along with the knowing that I’m right about him. Samael is similar to me.
He told me he came to Elysian Pines because his own mother feared what he is, that people don’t understand Nephilim. I know that feeling. I’ve known it most of my life, been misunderstood and judged.
So I stopped fighting it. I let people believe what they wanted, building my walls higher and stronger until even I couldn’t see over them. Until I was an Ice Queen.
Until now.
I might feel like a thawing mess, but the only reason I’m not in a puddle on the floor is because of three Nephilim who, somehow, I was meant to find.
All because of a magical town that shouldn’t exist. It sounds impossible—it should be impossible—but I can’t deny it anymore.
The evidence is too great, and the way I feel in my body is too real.
Everything is real, as real as Sam’s breath brushing my skin. As real as the shadow wrapped around my ankle, holding me here, refusing to let me run.
“You’re not wrong.” Sam’s solemn admission eases a bit of the swirling emotions in my gut.
I swallow. “I expected you to argue.”
“I don’t lie.”
I observe him. His shoulders are still tense, and I’m more positive now that he’s holding back, especially since he realized he’s been cutting off his emotions from me, from himself, like he’s been holding it all in for too long.
I study the high planes of his cheekbones and the strain of his facial muscles. I reach one of my hands up to try to touch part of the shadows, but I stop when Sam flinches.
I press my lips together and shift my weight from side to side, the tentacle on my ankle growing tighter like it’s afraid I’ll leave. More pieces fit together, and a question formulates in my mind.
“Are you afraid you’ll hurt me?” I glance at the building darkness around his being, the size growing until I can hardly see the store behind him. I feel another shadow tentacle slinking near my foot, and my nipples tighten painfully as my breath grows shorter.
His voice drops low. “Yes.”
A small part of my brain says I should be afraid, but I’m not. I don’t know why, but I know he won’t hurt me. It’s similar to how I knew I could give my body to Remi and Kai last night, why I let Remi have any kind of dominance over me at all while being intimate.
The image of Sam standing at the side of the rink tense and brooding comes to me like the flash of a camera. He looked similar to how he looks now: strained and holding himself back.
“Did you think you were responsible for me falling at the rink?”
He nods. “Yes. These.” The shadow around my ankle and the other one near my opposite foot pulse. “They’re part of my aura, a force of energy that all beings, even humans, have. Mine is stronger than most, and I have these.”
The tentacle-like shadows pulse again.
“They were reaching for you, like they are now, and I couldn’t contain them.”
“I didn’t see them then.” I think back to that moment. “But I did feel a pull—that’s why I was distracted and lost my balance.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m okay.” The shadow wrapped around my once-injured ankle caresses over me with added warmth like a kiss to make it better. I smile because of it, but it also makes me sad. I don’t remember the last time anyone has cared about me as much as these three Nephilim have.
“I’m glad,” Sam says.
We’ve drawn so close to each other that it’s hard to see his eyes. I want to lean in and kiss him, to end the tugging in my gut, to know what his lips feel like.
A nagging thought persists, telling me I need to be with him. He’s the only one who’s missing. It’s probably silly, but I think it, anyway. I’ve had both Remi and Kai, and now I need him.
But there’s still something he’s not saying. I can feel it in the tension between us and the pain that seems to radiate through his aura. “What are you not telling me?”
“If we—” Sam pauses, drawing in a breath. “If we cross a line together, Greer, I’m unsure of what will happen after.”
I dare to lift a hand. He watches it but doesn’t stop me as I place it on his chest. A zing of energy travels through the connection. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say something smart about him already knowing the future—or whatever he does exactly—but I don’t want to talk anymore.
“Do we have to know?” I cock my head, slanting my mouth over his.
Sam’s gaze flicks down to my lips. “What if I do something—”
“You won’t,” I say.
He stares back into my eyes, searching for something. When he finds whatever it is he’s looking for—permission or honesty, I’m not sure—he speaks again. “You’ll tell me if I do?”
I brush my lips over his, the delicate softness of them surprising me. “Are you saying I need a safe word?”
“Yes.”
I sweep my lips back the other way. “Christmas.”
His eyes crinkle in the corners with his sly grin, but he doesn’t kiss me yet. I pull back so I can fully look at him, at his stunning sharp face and the flecks of gray in his hair along with the subtle hesitance in his eyes.
I cup the side of his head, feeling the mix of short and long hair under my touch. “I trust you, Samael.” I glance at the shadow-tentacles swirling at my feet before looking back into his eyes. “All of you.”
Those are the magic words, because Sam…unleashes.