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Panic shot through me. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Is this who you really are, Roan? Someone this… kind?”
She thought I was kind?
My mouth moved, searching for an answer. “I-I don’t know.”
She nodded, seeming a bit concerned.
Panic pushed more words from me. “All I know is that if you let me, I would spend the rest of my life trying to make everything up to you. I’d try to fix every second of making you feel like you weren’t the most precious, valuable treasure in the whole fucking world. I’d take back every cruel word, and I’d show you what you meant to me, not just say it. I’d never make you doubt how much I wanted you again.”
Her brow twitched down.
Oh, fuck, I’d gone too far. I knew it. The sheer fact she’d let me get to this point, to tell her this much without pulling away was a miracle. Hell, it all was.
And then I’d screwed it up again.
I smiled, trying to hide the way it hurt, and started to step back.
Her hand tightened on mine, stopping me. “And the demon?”
I tensed. “What do you mean?”
“It has very specific ideas about being the only one who gets to be with me.”
The creature rumbled inside me for the first time in a while, pain and confusion rising from it. Disjointed thoughts came too, muttering of how she was ours. How it didn’t understand why she didn’t understand that.
I winced. “I’m sorry. I?—”
Her hand tightened on mine. “Stop.”
I looked back at her.
“Is that also how you feel? That you want me only to yourself?”
My mouth moved, and the truth emerged, as disjointed as the monster’s thoughts. “I want you, but… like an Erenlian. Sharing with the others. Living as a man. As a part of that group. And the demon…”
Years of hating it, of hating myself, suddenly felt like a thousand pounds of stone bearing down on my shoulders—a weight I’d always carried. The weight I deserved.
And yet…
“It wants you too. It…” The creature ached inside me and burrowed deeper as if to escape the admission. “I don’t think it understands how to deal with that.” Certainty shivered up from the demon. “But it would do anything for you. Die for you, if that’s what you wanted. If that’s what it took to keep you safe.”
She stared at me, and I couldn’t read her expression. Confused but pained, but… something that made no sense.
Then she stepped closer. Her hand caressed my cheek. “And am I your treluria?” she whispered.
My hand slid around her side carefully, cautiously, praying she didn’t pull away, while agony and ecstasy tangled in me, an exquisite torture. “You always have been.”
She smiled, and I couldn’t hold back any longer.
I kissed her.
27
GWYNEIRA
Imet Roan’s lips with mine, at a loss for how this was even happening. I’d thought I was crazy for being attracted to him, this surly, glowering giant who looked more like a shadow than a man half the time. Even when he shifted back from being the demon, I hadn’t expected more than cold distance with a small chance of an apology for kidnapping me.
