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Indecision and wariness flickered over her face. “I wasn’t finished…”
“Now,” he repeated. The almost silent anger that burned inside was an alien sensation to him.
He never burned with fury. Everything stayed contained, controlled, carefully restrained. Nothing else was acceptable. He couldn’t allow himself to let his anger free. He never allowed that. If he did, he may go hunting and commit a sin so unpardonable that … He cringed at the thought of it.
The sin of murdering his father.
Moving carefully, Summer rose to her feet, her gaze wary as she glanced at him a final time before walking slowly from the living room to the kitchen.
Raeg waited for her by the front door, listening to her as she told her family good-bye and tried to ignore her mother’s protest that they had plans to finalize.
Plans to finalize. Plans for the damned parties geared to finding her a husband
and a father for the children she would one day have. He wanted to curse it, rail over it and declare it would only happen over his dead body. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop it and he knew it. That didn’t mean he could allow her to risk herself by attending any of the damned events, until Dragovich was stopped. That he would definitely keep from happening.
One way or the other.
Chapter
FOURTEEN
She could tell they knew about the parties.
The second Summer saw Raeg’s expression, saw the emotions roiling in his eyes and darkening them, she knew her secret was out.
There was a strange sense of relief in the knowledge that she no longer had to worry about telling them. Her time had been running out and she’d known it. The first party was in just days, the afternoon barbeque and social to allow everyone to meet and become familiar with one another would have been impossible to attend without them being aware she was gone, she’d kept telling herself mockingly.
Now, they knew. Now there was just the battle of wills to get through, and hadn’t she battled with them enough in the past years over one thing or another to know what to expect? The only difference was that she’d never had to battle both of them at once.
Raeg didn’t speak as they walked to the house and neither did she. Her chest ached with the knowledge that they could no longer ignore the fact that life would go on if they survived this battle with Dragovich.
Life would go on, they would leave and return to DC, and she’d be left here with nothing more than the memories of them to haunt her home.
Stepping into the house with Raeg, she winced as he slammed the door behind them, then stalked past her to the bar.
Falcon sat on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, a half-filled glass of whisky held in one hand, his pale blue eyes like chips of ice glowing in the savage features of his face.
He didn’t speak as she walked into the room, her gaze going between him and Raeg, the silence between them so thick she felt as though she were trying to swim through it.
God, it hurt, she thought. She’d had no idea how much this would actually hurt. Facing them, knowing they knew that she had every intention of living, of building a life after they were gone. Though, that wasn’t exactly true. The plan had been to build a life period, to ignore what she wanted and go after what she could have.
That was before they’d touched her, before they’d shown her how good it was being a part of them, being their lover as well as their friend.
“The two of you act as though I’ve betrayed you,” she said when neither of them spoke.
Falcon lifted his drink and took a healthy swallow, not even grimacing at the sharp burn of the whisky, never taking his eyes off her.
She’d never seen him look so cold, so hard. Despite his fiery nature, the pale blue color of his eyes always gave the impression of implacable emotionlessness that had always fooled the casual observer.
She’d never been fooled though, but neither had she ever seen that ice encompass even his whole expression. She would have expected him to be cursing in every language he knew, railing at her, demanding. The fact that he wasn’t caused her throat to thicken with tears. The only time she’d ever seen him not give into that temper was the night she’d been forced to kill Gia.
“You can’t go to these parties, Summer.” It was Raeg who spoke, but he wasn’t ordering her, he wasn’t commanding her. His voice was hoarse, his expression tormented, as he stood at the bar staring into the glass he’d just drank from. “You know it’s too dangerous.”
She couldn’t do this.
It hurt so bad. They weren’t screaming at her, they weren’t being confrontational, they weren’t giving her a fight. There was no place to expend all the emotion building inside her, ripping her apart.
She couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t let herself cry because it would only hurt all of them more, and none of them deserved that.
