Ivy’s heart contracted at the thought of his shining beauty being snuffed out. But Gaze was a monster. If anyone would kill a unicorn, he would.
“I’ll never tell,” she vowed. “But you shouldn’t have trusted me with this, Hugh. It’s too big. I wish you hadn’t—“
The words died on her tongue. No matter what, she couldn’t regret that perfect moment. She couldn’t regret seeing his true self.
Hugh put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunching a little. He still didn’t quite look at her.
“I didn’t show you in order to explain why Gaze wants me.” There was a rough catch in his voice. “I showed you so that you’ll understand why I can’t…Ivy, you must know the big thing about unicorns. What all the legends and myths say.”
For a moment, she thought he was still talking about his horn. Then it struck her. The other thing about unicorns.
The reason why he’d put his head in her lap.
“You like virgins,” she said, and immediately wished the fake grass would swallow her up. “Um. That came out wrong.”
“It’s not so much a matter of liking virgins.” A faint flush stained his sharp cheekbones. “But being around anyone who isn’t chaste gives me a screaming headache. Even people who have been celibate for decades still make me flinch a little. Virgins are the only people I can touch without pain.”
She digested this for a moment. “You can touch Hope, right?”
“And this is really not where I was expecting this conversation to go,” he muttered. “Yes, Ivy. Your little sister is definitely still a virgin. Anyone else whose sex life you’d like to enquire about?”
“Um.” She was certain she was red as a brick. “Yours. If you…how do you…?”
“I don’t.”
All that masculine beauty, and he was just as untouched as she was?
“Ever?” Ivy said in disbelief.
“Ever.” He met her eyes at last, and the raw, desperate hunger in them stole the breath from her lungs. “I want you, Ivy. So badly that it’s all I can do not to take you up against a wall here and now. But I can’t. I’d lose my unicorn.”
She blinked. “Is that supposed to be a metaphor?”
“No. If I—if I made love to you, it would kill my unicorn. Literally.”
She stared at him.
He let out a harsh bark of laughter, raking both hands through his hair. “And my bloody suicidal beast just said, It would be worth it.”
“Let me get this straight,” Ivy said slowly. “If we have sex, you’d never be able to shift again?”
“Worse than that,” he said in a low voice. “I’d lose my powers. Lose my ability to heal. Hell, I might even lose the connection to you. I don’t know. But I do know I wouldn’t be a shifter anymore.”
“Wait. Wait.” Ivy held up her hands, her mind reeling. “I need a minute.”
She paced from fake tree to fake tree, struggling to wrap her head around everything that he’d told her. What he was, what he’d risked to show her, what he still risked just by being near her…
“Okay,” she said, turning back to Hugh with her hands on her hips. “So what about anal?”
Chapter 10
He’d heard her wrong.
“Sorry,” Hugh said. “Would you repeat that?”
“Anal.” Ivy had gone bright red from throat to forehead, but she enunciated the word with exaggerated care. “Could we have anal sex?”
He hadn’t heard her wrong.