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“I’m not afraid to touch another person,” he snapped.
He was getting frustrated, but I was frustrated, too, with the sense that there was some truth just out of my reach. “But you’re obviously not happy. So why not leave? What keeps you here?” My roommate Mei-Ling was a diminutive ninth grader and she’d managed to escape. “Your blood kin aren’t even on the island with you. I don’t get it. Why do you even stay?”
“A man must do as a man must do,” he said mysteriously.
“That didn’t stop Carden. ” I’d said it dismissively, intending the words only as a sting to myself, but I saw instantly how they stung Ronan instead.
“You are in over your head with that…him. I’d think that you, Annelise, more than anyone would strive for better than what he offers you. I tell you, a man does as he must, but Carden McCloud is no man. ”
His anger, so quick and sharp, startled me. “And you are?”
He reached out, resting his hand in the dirt at my hip, leaning closer. “I am. ”
My breath hitched. I stilled, waiting to see what would happen next.
He raised his other hand, slid it around my neck.
What was happening? Was this a lesson? Had I offended him—did he think I was accusing him of being afraid to touch a girl, and now he had something to prove?
His hand was warm and gentle gliding over my skin, and my scalp tingled as his fingers laced through the hair at the back of my neck. He leaned closer still, until I could no longer see his features clearly. Only impressions of Ronan filled my view. The dark stubble. His full mouth. A fringe of black lashes on lids half-closed. Those features had once rocked my world. Once, in a Florida parking lot, they’d been enough to convince me to get into a car with a stranger.
And now? Now Ronan was no longer a stranger. He’d become so familiar to me. Somehow, Ronan had become all I had.
How I missed Carden and the comfort he’d given me. I longed for connection. I missed my friends. All of them, they’d been so dear to me, and yet here I was, alone, aching, steeped in desolation and uncertainty. Carden had vanished. My friends were lost to me.
Everyone was gone, but Ronan was here. Right here.
Would it be so bad, so wrong, to seek just a little bit of comfort with him?
I leaned in to him, testing. He didn’t move. Was this solace that he was offering? Was it more? I leaned closer, and he still didn’t move away. My heart began to pound. All my fear and desolation and abandonment…it all catalyzed, becoming this need I felt now. Ronan was going to kiss me, and even if he was using his hypnotic touch, I’d take it. I’d take him. I just wanted to feel him, because somehow I knew. He wasn’t using his powers. This was just a touch—the touch of a guy on my skin.
Then suddenly…cold air.
I opened my eyes—when had I closed them?—and saw he was staring at me, his gaze so heavy and dark.
“I can’t,” he said. His jaw was tight, and it was like he had to grit out the words.
And then he was gone.
I stared after him, even though I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Breathily, I asked the universe, “What the hell was that?”
I collapsed onto my back, grinding my fingers into my hair as I stared up at the sky. My heart was still skittering in my chest, my pulse as shallow as the air in my lungs.
Holy crap.
I guess I no longer reminded him of his sister.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I plopped onto the sand, panting for breath, clutching a hand at my side. I hoped the pain was just a stitch from my run and not the beginnings of the blood fever.
Okay, fine…so maybe it wasn’t as dire as all that.
Check that—emotionally, it was pretty freaking dire, but physically? I was feeling some discomfort, but nothing crippling, not yet. Just…a needful sort of thirst. I thought back to last term. I couldn’t go through that ordeal again, through the pain of separation and the early stages of breaking a bond.
Carden. He was the opposite of stupid Ronan. I didn’t get stupid Ronan at all—lurking, popping up at unusual times, almost kissing me. When Carden had wanted to kiss me, he’d kissed me. He was so easy, so predictable…
Until he was no longer easy and predictable.
