“If you don’t shape up, it’s going to be our last, as well.”
Declan sighs heavily. “I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to give you a little time to come to grips with the news about your dad before I sprang anything else on you.”
“I’m sorry, too.” I fidget for a minute before deciding to hell with it. I apologized, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have more to say about this whole thing. “I’m not a child, Declan. I don’t need you to dole out information to me like candy.”
“Believe me, Xandra. I don’t think of you as a child.” He reaches for my hand, pulls it to his lips and kisses it. “You are the strongest, bravest woman I know. I believe, really believe, that you can handle anything. But that doesn’t mean I want you to.”
He studies the road for long minutes, his jaw clenched and fingers so tight on the wheel that I’m afraid he might actually rip it off the steering column. I think about poking at him, getting him to talk to me, but I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to give him space. Or at least as much space as I can in the front seat of a car.
More time passes; my stomach getting tighter with each mile we leave behind us. Just when I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin, he says, “It kills me, these powers that you have. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you sleep at night or how you get up and go looking, knowing what it is you’re going to find. Even worse, knowing what you’re going to go through when you do find it.
“It kills me that I can’t shelter you from that. That I can only stand by and watch as you live through being raped, beaten, stabbed, strangled, burned. I can’t stop it, can’t protect you from any of it. Hell, the fact that you’re with me actually makes it worse.”
His words slice right through the last of my anger, have me resting my head on his shoulder and rubbing my hand up his own leg in a gesture meant to comfort. Because I don’t know what it’s like for him, not really, but I can imagine how hellish it would be if I had to watch him suffer the way he’s been forced to watch me.
“And yet I can’t let you go, either. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times to walk away from you for your own safety. But I just can’t do it. I love you too fucking much. I know it’s selfish and—”
“Stop the car,” I tell him for the second time in ten minutes.
“What?”
“I said, stop the car.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? I’m pouring my heart out to you and you want to walk away from me?”
“Just pull the car over, Declan.”
“Fine. Whatever.” His jaw hard as granite, he once again pulls onto the shoulder. “Go do whatever you want to do.”
I scoot over the gear shift, slide into his lap. “What I want to do, what I need to do, is this.” I wrap my arms around him and lower my lips to his.
For a second, he seems shell-shocked. Like it’s the last thing he ever expected me to do. But then he grabs onto me as though I’m the only lifeline he’s got left, one hand clenching in my hair while the other clenches on my hip. And then he devours me.
Minutes later, he raises his head. I moan in protest and he licks gently over my lips in an effort to soothe and comfort. “If your family weren’t waiting for us on the other end of this drive, I would say screw it and take you right here for the sheer pleasure of watching you come. But we need to go.”
Beautiful man. Sweet man, though I know he’d balk at the description. “We do need to go. But I need to tell you something first.”
His eyes, those beautiful, beautiful eyes, turn wary from one blink to the next. “Yes?”
“I love you, too. I love you so much that it scares me deep inside, because if anything ever happened to you, I don’t know how I’d survive.”
“Xandra—”
“Wait. I’m not done.” I press gentle kisses on his forehead, his eyes, his mouth. “And if you ever try to walk away from me for my own good, you better be prepared. Because I will chase you to the ends of the fucking earth. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
A deep, painful shudder wracks him at my words. Then he grabs my upper arms, like he’s preparing to shake some sense into me, and I brace myself.
For long seconds, nothing happens and I know he’s struggling with the rage of emotions inside him. Time stretches, elongates, until I hear only his harsh breathing and the frantic beating of my own heart. Then, just when I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands again, he slides his right hand over my bicep and shoulder to my neck.
He rests his hand on my chest, brushes his fingers gently over the hollow of my throat. It’s a gesture filled with tenderness, with need, with love—one that shows me his vulnerabilities even as it highlights my own and it heats my blood now just as it did then.
I bring my own hands up to cup his face, brush my lips gently against his own. He groans, a sound of desire and torment and fury, then buries his face in the curve of my neck and just breathes—harsh, ragged sounds that at any other time would be painful to hear. But right here, right now, they’re absolutely perfect.
Twenty-three
“Where is he?” I demand the second my sister Willow opens the door to my parents’ house. “Where’s Dad?’
“In his and Mom’s bedroom.” She steps aside to let Declan and me in. I try to ignore how worried she looks, how drained, but I can’t. She’s always been the wild one, the one full of life and laughter. But right now, she just looks sad. That scares me more than my mother’s phone call did, more than the thoughts that chased themselves around my head on the long drive here. “He’s sleeping, so everyone but Rachael and Mom is in the kitchen. Come on back with me. I’ll make you some coffee.”
I ignore her invitation as I head for the stairs. I’m not going to wake him up, but I need to see my father with my own eyes, need to prove to myself that he’s okay. Or, if not okay, at least alive. Yes, I think as I take the steps two at a time—Declan right at my heels—for now alive will do very nicely.
But when I get to the wing that is my parents’ private quarters in the royal residence, there are four guards blocking the way—two I recognize as part of my father’s regular security detail, but the others I’ve never seen before. And when one of them steps in front of me, as if he intends to block my path, I lift a hand, keep it at the ready. My command of Heka might be rudimentary at best, but if this guy thinks he’s going to keep me from my father, then he’d better be ready to throw down. Because that so isn’t happening.
Declan puts a soothing hand on the small of my back, even as his other comes up to rest atop mine and guide it back down to my side. Normally I’d be pissed at him for interfering, but the fact of the matter is he’s right to step in. I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders right now.
Jared, my father’s head of security, steps between the new guards and me. He’s been with my family almost as long as I’ve been alive and is like an uncle to me.
“It’s okay,” he tells them. “This is Xandra.” But even he looks wary, on alert, and for the first time, I realize the guards aren’t focused on me at all. Declan’s the one who has all their attention.
“He’s with me.” Figuring that’s the end of it, I brush past them and start down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. But I get only a few feet before I realize that Declan isn’t following me. Jared and the others have closed ranks and are preventing him from passing the spot where they are stationed.
“What’s going on?” I demand, retracing my steps. “I said he’s with me.”
“I’m sorry, Xan, but your mother issued strict orders that he’s not to be allowed past this point.”
“That’s ridiculous!”