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When she nodded, I said, “You should’ve said something sooner. I’ll have a therapist come to your suite. How many times a week?”
“That would be awesome. And I don’t know—maybe once a week?”
“Twice a week,” I decided. “And if you need them to come more often, let Rio know.”
“Thanks,” she said with a yawn.
“C’mere.” Angry at myself for keeping her out too late, I scooped her up along with the blanket and the other gear and started back to SUV.
“I can walk,” she said around another yawn. “Olivia says it’s good for me.”
“Quiet.” I nipped her lower lip. “I want to, okay?”
23
Eden
Talon struck out for the SUV with a long, easy stride. I curled drowsily into his hard body. If only it could always be like this.
Here in the woods he wasn’t a tough-ass Maritime lieutenant, and I wasn’t a disgraced thrall on house arrest. We were just Talon and Eden.
“You…warm me. I can’t explain it. You just do.”
My heart turned over when he said things like that. When he noticed I was getting tired or that my back hurt.
I kept coming back to what Twilight had told me about how upset he’d been after I’d left. Obsessed, she’d said.
Maybe it was true? And if so, maybe I hadn’t totally fucked things up between us?
Because tonight, he’d taken me on a date. There was no other word for it. A first date, because we’d never gone somewhere like this, just the two of us.
Yeah, we’d gone places together when I’d been his thrall—to clubs or parties—but always as part of a group of other vampires and thralls. Never alone, and especially not somewhere so intimate, so clearly special to him.
He’d shown me a piece of himself tonight, a piece I suspected few people had ever seen. I hugged the memory to myself like he’d given me a bag of gold.
Maybe we were finally getting back to what we’d had? Or…even more?
We reached the SUV, and he opened the door and helped me inside, then handed me my mittens before stowing the rest of the stuff in the back. When we emerged onto the main road, the ocean was spread before us, the full moon splashing light on the dark waves.
“It’s so pretty tonight,” I murmured.
“You want to stop?”
“Yes, please.” I turned my head to smile at him, tired but not wanting the evening to end.
“No problem.” He pulled off the road onto a grassy cliff, angling the vehicle so we could look out. Fifteen meters below, the water heaved like a living thing, the surf’s muted boom reaching us even through the closed windows.
“I missed the ocean,” I confessed. “The salty air, the sound, the way it never looks exactly the same…”
His left brow lifted. “I thought you hated Lilith Island.”
“I don’t hate it. It’s home, after all, but sometimes it feels so…claustrophobic. Everyone’s related to everyone else. Everyone knows your business.”
“I know,” he said drily.
“Yeah, I guess you do.”
“So you’ve heard the stories?”
