God, but this man eviscerated me at every turn.
“Yeah, I know,” I mumbled. “But you don’t see H.R. carting me over her shoulder and forcing me to live with her.”
“She might’ve, she knew what you’ve been doin’.”
“Well, now she has a fucking good idea because of your dramatics,” I snapped. “I don’t need people knowing what I’m doing with Irina. It puts them in danger, puts me in danger, the more people know.”
“You think I don’t get that?” He leaned forward farther, rocking onto his toes so he could hover over me. “I told them you went snoopin’ around, I didn’t tell them you were workin’ for Irina, and I won’t. But we gotta lay down some laws here, Li. Otherwise, I’m lockin’ ya up like Rapunzel in an urban tower.”
“First,” he continued, listing them off on his strong, tatted hand. “I’m workin’ this with ya. Don’t give a fuck what you think about it. I’m doin’ it. Not sure how I’ll get close to the bitch yet given I’m solid Fallen, but I’ll figure it out so when I gotta have your back I can be there.”
I cracked my knuckles, but nodded.
“Second, you and me are spendin’ an hour every mornin’ at Box n’ Burn with Wrath and Bat learnin’ how to defend yourself. Like hell I’m lettin’ you work at Wet Works when you know fuck all about self-defence.”
That was actually a good idea, so I nodded again, feeling stupid for not thinking of that myself.
“Lastly…” His voice went to smoke, and he dropped to his knees beside the bathtub so he could reach over to cup my cheek, bringing our foreheads together so he could speak into the wedge of air between our lips. “You cast aside this space you’ve put between us. Hurt you two years ago, and not gonna apologize for doin’ it ’cause, Li, I got my reasons. There’s no part of me worth even an inch of you, and you gotta get that, know it, and forgive me for pointin’ it out to you, yeah? You gotta believe I’ve always got you at my heart, on my mind, thinkin’ about what’s right for you. And me? I’m not it. But fuck me, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. It’ll never mean that.”
We breathed the same air for a long moment as I tried to digest his words, failing not to be hurt by them even though it wasn’t his intention.
Finally, he pulled away so he could look me in the eye, and I nearly gasped at the beauty of him in the light spilling through the high window, highlighted pink and orange with the descending sun.
“I know you care about me, Nova,” I said softly, studying the way the rose gold light gilded his Patrician profile and made him look like a handsome soldier stamped on a Roman coin. “But we both know the way you care isn’t enough.”
“You’ll get over it,” he promised, but there was a twist to his lips that said he wasn’t sure he believed that.
My own heart flatlined because I sure as hell didn’t believe it either.
“Maybe it’s not me who needs to get over something,” I dared to say, feeling angry and reckless and done with Nova and his games.
He knew, god dammit, he knew how I felt. He knew what I wanted, yet he still kept me on the hook just because he couldn’t bear to live without me.
There was a knock at the front door, and I stirred, waiting for him to get up to answer it. Instead, he continued to kneel there looking just as frustrated with me as I was with him.
So I took matters in my own hands, determined to prove what he seemed unwilling to understand.
I was no longer the seven-year-old girl who needed his protection.
I was a twenty-four-year-old woman who needed something more, something opaque and carnal like a flower that bloomed only in the warmth and dark of night.
There was another knock at the door.
Watching him carefully, I stood up.
Slowly, like Aphrodite emerging from the waves, bubbles and water, dried petals and foam sluicing down the aggressive curves of my body, caressing me the way Nova never would.
His eyes followed the stream, smoldering against my skin so hot I thought I might burn. They lingered at the swell of my breasts, the tightening peaks of my nipples, sliding down the flat line of my belly to the apex of my thighs where my bare skin was paler than the rest, soft and hairless, clit a hard bud amid my dusky folds.
I could hear the air hiss through his teeth as he took his fill, and I let him.
There was sweat beading on his brow, a muscle pulsing in the hard angle of his jaw.
He looked wrecked by the sight of me, and I gloried in it for another long second before I stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel. Back to him, ass jiggling as I wiped myself dry, grabbed a Street Ink tee of his hanging on the back of the door, and donned it.