“Oh, Linc. You are so special to me. I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you,” I whisper.
“You won’t,” he says. “I accept you as you are. I understand and I accept it.” He pauses as if he has more to say but doesn’t want to.
“But what?” I say.
“Not a ‘but’ so much as a ‘will you?’”
“Will I what?” I ask warily.
I feel the tingle go up the back of my neck before I hear Constantine say, “If you ask her to marry you, you will have to get in line.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FIVE
I spin my head around as Lincoln peers over my shoulder. “What the fuck?” I ask Constantine.
“I came looking for you. I can’t help it that my ability brings me exactly to wherever you are, and whoever you are with,” he says, casually leaning against the door jamb.
“Do you mind?” Lincoln snaps at him. “This is private.”
Constantine just looks at him mildly. “I need to talk to you,” he says to me.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I sulk at him.
“In fact, she asked me to tell you to ‘piss off’ if you came here looking for her,” Lincoln says boldly, probably due to the fact that I’m still sitting on his lap, firmly in between the two of them.
“Did she now?” Constantine asks.
“How long exactly have you been lurking?” I ask suddenly.
“A few minutes,” he says with a shrug. “I didn’t want to interrupt. Seems like you were having a good time.”
I gape at him. He was here the whole time? The Peeping Tom.
“Not the whole time,” he says, affronted, apparently reading my expression-filled face that he finds so endearing. “I’m not a complete pervert.”
“I think you need to leave,” Lincoln growls at him, not happy to learn we have been peeped on.
“I’m not going anywhere without Aefre. This is, after all, my time. You are the one who is encroaching and should leave,”
Constantine corrects. He pushes off from the door jamb and goes into defensive mode. Oh, for fuck’s sake! Men are so pathetic.
“This is my hotel suite. I am not going anywhere. And speaking of encroaching, shouldn’t you be going all Roman Warrior on someone else’s ass right about now? I, at least, am allowed,” Linc says, using Devon’s term to piss Constantine off even further.
“He has been dealt with,” Constantine says shortly. “Aefre. Can we please speak?”
Dealt with? How? A tiny slap on the wrist followed by a friendly fist bump? Okay, not that my sire does fist bumps, but you get the point.
“Well, however you dealt with him, clearly wasn’t to the satisfaction of Liv. She was in tears when she came down here before,” Lincoln says, coming to my defense and wrapping his arms tighter around me, protectively.
A flash of pain goes across Constantine’s face at those words and he again asks, “Aefre. Please, can we go and talk?”
“Fine,” I say briefly. I look back at Lincoln and breathe in deeply. “Hold that thought and we will talk more later.” He nods and I give him a lingering kiss, much to his delight and Constantine’s annoyance. I climb off him and make a show of putting my pajamas back on the old-fashioned way, just to make him wait a bit longer. “Bye, Linc,” I say before I Astral off back upstairs, ignoring Constantine’s furious look.
He is a second behind me as I plop myself on the sofa, waiting.
“Well?” I snap when he doesn’t say anything. I know he is keeping his distance for a variety of reasons, but one of them is obviously that I’m covered in Lincoln’s scent and that has his knickers in a twist – even more so because Lincoln is a Shifter. Under normal circumstances, I would have had this discussion after a shower, but I am so pissed off with him right now, I sit basking in his discomfort and anger.
“Would you prefer to shower first?” he asks bluntly.