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“Both?” She let out a short, sharp laugh and stepped back. He caught her hand before she could turn away, holding on when she tried to pull free.
Though he hated to agree with Dougal on anything, he’d vowed to tell her this truth. “Once I had more women than that pasha, ’tis true. But I have also been too long alone.”
Aeons, it seemed. Such was the way of loneliness.
Kris peered into his face with a measuring look. “You said the ghosts come to you.” He stiffened, and when he would have pulled away she held on. “Are they the reason you’re alone?”
He sighed. Another truth he could share.
“Yes.”
“Your family? He shook his head. “Did you … love and lose someone?”
Liam didn’t think he’d been capable of love. At least not until that night beneath the moon. Now …
He still wasn’t sure.
“I understand.” She sque
ezed his hand. “You turned to sex to forget.”
At his confused expression, she continued. “You lost someone you loved, and you turned to meaningless sex with an endless string of women.”
“They were mistakes,” he said. Horrible, terrible, haunting mistakes.
Kris tilted her head, studying him. “Why me?”
Good question. He wished he knew. What was it about her that made him break every vow he’d made since he’d become what he was?
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t care.”
Because, right now, he was going to break every one of them again.
CHAPTER 18
There was something Liam was supposed to do, somewhere he was supposed to be. But staring into Kris’s eyes, soft and dark and filled with sympathy for him, made the ache in Liam’s chest both worse and a little better. When he kissed her, he felt reborn.
“Liam,” she whispered, right before his lips met hers and the name—truly his and one he hadn’t heard for far too long—had his breath catching as his body hardened.
He’d had women. Scores of them. But they’d been—
Mistakes. Aye. He had not known any better.
He wished he could forget them, but he was cursed to remember. And that was right; that was justice.
Kris had said he’d used sex to forget. But he hadn’t.
Until now.
When he touched her, when he loved her, all that he remembered was her.
The catch of her breath when he wrapped her in his arms, rubbed her breasts against his chest, and opened her mouth just enough for him to delve.
She tasted of ale, but a hint, the tangy flavor enhancing what was hers alone. He drank from her, seeking oblivion. Finding it.
His chilled hands crept beneath the hem of her sweater, and she jumped, then nipped at his lip. But when he would have removed his hands, she snatched them back, warming them with her own.
Beneath the confines of her bra, her breasts blazed; his palms tingled from the heat. When he squeezed them she moaned. His name again, the sound of it enflamed him. No one had cried out his name in forever, and he discovered that he needed it.
