Chapter 23 #2
“Didn’t have you pegged for a defeatist.”
He gets up and stacks our plates. Before walking them to the sink, he refills my glass with ice water. “I’m realistic, not defeatist. Besides, if my passion becomes my work, then I’ll stop enjoying it.”
“Worst philosophy ever.” I turn in my seat and watch as he lowers the dishes into the sink, then picks up the suds-filled scrubber and proceeds to handwash them even though I have a professional dishwasher.
Dorian loves doing the dishes. He says it helps clear his head. Is that the case for Cillian, or does he do them to make sure I don’t label him a slob?
“What’s for dessert?”
A smile returns to his lips. One that’s unlike his usual ones. It’s neither smug nor wry nor shy, but eager. It hits his eyes like a breaking dawn. “Something my dad used to make.”
Here I thought his father was an alcoholic who’d left only ruin in his wake. “Your father cooked?”
“No. He tinkered, as Mom would say. He liked tossing random ingredients together. Most of the time, the combinations were awful, but once or twice, the flavors just…worked.”
I’m tempted to ask if he tinkered while sober or drunk, but I sense bringing up that facet of his father will kill Cillian’s mood. Besides, if it left good memories, then it was surely before the man started hitting the bottle.
Cillian pops the lids off a tub of mascarpone and a container of dates, then unknots a baggie of walnuts.
His tongue pokes out the corner of his mouth as he spoons dollops of cream on a plate, then splits open a few dates and replaces their pits with walnuts.
He nests the recomposed fruit on the strokes of cream, before carrying his creation back to the table.
“Do you cook often on your camp stove?” I ask.
He cants his head. “How do you know I own a camp stove?”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. “You told me the day we went to the tow lot to pick up your ride,” I lie. “You asked me to dinner. Said you wanted to cook for me. Remember?”
When he breathes out a, “Right,” my pulse settles.
Thankfully, he returns his attention to the dessert, scoots one of the dates along with some cream onto his spoon, then holds it up to my mouth.
“Haven’t been spoon-fed since I was a baby. Actually, I probably wasn’t even spoon-fed back then,” I say, leaning over and closing my teeth around the utensil, before leaning back to savor everything.
Cillian watches me intently, as though trying to make sure not to miss the moment the flavors bloom. It’s…fantastic. Like a mouthful of creamy treacle, but a thousand times better. It’s so freaking good that I actually moan.
Cillian beams before using the same spoon to consume a bite himself. An hour ago, his fingers were venturing mere inches from my core, but for some reason, his use of the same utensil feels ten times more intimate. Go figure.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind a private chef.
It’d save me from living off takeout or freeloading at the Blooms or at my brother’s.
” I place my forearms on the table as though I were about to enter into a business negotiation.
“You’d get full creative license. All I’d ask is that you keep the veggies out of desserts. And no pickles.”
His pupils throb.
“I’d pay you the salary of a private chef.” When a scowl starts to form along his mouth, I say, “You’d be able to afford your own place.”
“My camper is my own place,” he grumbles, clearly not charmed by my offer.
“I’m not suggesting you get rid of it.”
“I’m not a charity case, Electra.” His lips are wedged so tightly that his words cut through the air like hail pellets. “I’m happy to make you any meal you want, anytime you want.”
I sigh. “This has nothing to do with charity, Cillian. Charity is my father offering to put you up in an apartment. What I’m offering is a job. A real one, with a five-figure monthly salary.”
He crosses his arms. “No.”
“A high five-figure salary.”
“I don’t want—” He shifts his jaw from side to side. “I don’t want an employer-employee relationship with you.”
I press my lips together, knowing full well what he wants.
His gaze rakes across my mouth, dips to the low V of my dress, before rising back to my face. “One real shot. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“Why me?” My eyes flare, because I’m that insecure.
His lashes flutter, then reel high, my compulsion taking effect. “My mother swore everyone has a perfect match. She said I’d know the instant I found her. That I’d feel it, not in my heart, but in my gut. Like some hardwired instinct.”
“Wasn’t she married twice?” It’s a low blow, but swooning isn’t my MO. Neither is accepting the fact that someone could love me that much, especially without knowing me.
A flash of anger stabs his posture, rigidifying it, swelling it. He seems all of a sudden huge, like a storm cloud about to erupt and drown the world. Perhaps because he’s rolled his shoulders forward and planted his forearms on the table.
“She didn’t love her second husband like she loved my father,” he growls. “Dad was her one-and-only.”
My eyes spasm from his aggressive tone. “Got it.”
In loaded silence, we stare at one another. My skin is covered in goosebumps, and my gut is churning as though the meal was too much when it’s the company that’s too much. Cillian Lowry is too much.
Too intense.
Too attentive.
Too possessive.
Too determined.
I’d never admit this to anyone, but Cillian Lowry frightens me, not physically but emotionally.
I don’t know what to do with his attraction.
I don’t know how to receive it.
But most of all, what if I’m never capable of returning it?
Deciding it’s safer to crush a seed before it blooms than uproot a full-grown plant, I say, “This might come as a surprise, but like your mother, I believe in soulmates.” When hope silvers his irises, I add, “And like you, I believe I’ve already met mine.
” I swallow, trying to ease the tension forming in my throat in order to deliver the killing blow. “When I was ten.”
The tendons in Cillian’s neck grow so corded that they send his necklace swinging.
Not wanting to bear witness to the utter annihilation of his dreams, I rise from my chair, seize the dessert plate and our glasses of water. “Thank you for dinner. It was delicious.”
If I thought the silence was charged before, it’s downright suffocating by the time I reach the sink.
I pick up the brush and start scrubbing.
I’m so concentrated on the foamy bristles that I don’t notice right away the shift in the air—the subtle, magnetic pull of another body sidling in behind mine.
Cillian reaches around me to flick off the tap, then wrests the plate from my hands and places it on the drying mat.
When his damp hand closes around the edge of the countertop, and his breath glances against my neck, and his heat surges against my spine, I stiffen.
He waits without moving for the tension in my bones to ease.
When a full minute slips by, and I’m still wound as tight as a tripwire, he expels a deep exhale. I suspect he’s about to abandon his plight to win me over. After all, how much fight does a person have in them?
But Cillian Lowry doesn’t step back. It’s as if he’s waiting for the version of me brave enough to turn around and admit that I’m no longer in love with Malachi.
My heart wages a war with my head. A week ago, I was pining over another man. An hour ago, that other man was here, and I felt nothing.
My breathing pattern changes, sharpens. My forehead throbs and spins. I’m panicking. I haven’t panicked in…in…since…
My arms burn as though a thousand needles were plunging through my skin.
“I c-can’t…” I stammer.
I’m aware not all humans are after our blood, but once they learn we have magic, the allure of it becomes intoxicating for most.
I think of Malachi’s baby brother, of his delicate web of blood vessels, and how he’ll probably need to be taken away from his parents at some point.
I think of my biological mother.
“Can’t what?” Cillian breathes, his voice slow and sultry. “Admit you feel something for me?”
“You’re off your rocker,” I grit out.
His lips move along the shell of my ear. “Want to know another thing my mother told me, Miss Serran?”
I hold still.
“She said that there’s nothing more frightening than when you find your one-and-only, because you realize the amount of power a person can hold over you.”
“Maybe she should’ve listened to her heart instead of her gut and chosen a less dominating man.”
My comeback draws the sort of sigh reserved for dim-witted children. “Turn around, look me in the eye, and swear you feel nothing for me.”
“The only thing I feel is annoyance.”
“Don’t say it to the sink. Say it to my face.”
I whirl. The heat that engulfed my spine now fires across my ribs.
His face dips. He’s so close that I can taste the sweet creaminess of dessert on his breath. “You’re so beautiful.”
His compliment is so unexpected that it blanks my mind.
Nevertheless, one blink carries me back to sanity. “You’ve got to let me go,” I rasp. “I’m no good for you.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of what’s good for me?” His mouth is so close to mine. Closer than any mouth has ever gotten.
I’m breathing so fast that I start to feel dizzy and have to clasp the island at my back. “Because you don’t understand what you’d be getting in bed with.”
“You mean who I’d be getting in bed with?” He slants his mouth just the slightest bit, the tip of his nose ghosting over mine.
“No. What. We, Atlanteans…we’re…we’re a unit.
We’re complicated. We don’t mix well with others.
” I summon my magic to push him away, but it plays dead, as though the force he’s exerting over me has trapped it in its tracks.
“Which is why I’m not asking you to let me go but demanding you to do so.
” I breathe in and out. In and out. “I’m trying to preserve your sanity.
” Another ragged breath saws through my lungs.
“You deserve some sweet, stable, uncomplicated girl.”
His nose drags along my cheekbone with the precision of a scalpel. When he reaches my ear, he says—excruciatingly slowly, “I don’t want sweet…stable…and uncomplicated.”
The warmth of his breath spills down my neck and trickles around my ribs. I shiver.
“For fuck’s sake, Cillian.” I shove myself out of his space and away from the irrational gravity dragging at my bones, then do what he refuses to do: I leave.