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Getting it, Khloé nodded again and moved her hands to his shoulders.
“She’d turn up now and then,” Keenan went on. “Every few years or so. She’d always give me the same spiel—she was ready to settle down now, to put down some roots, to try ‘lair-life,’ as she called it. But a few weeks would go by, and then she’d be gone again. She never said goodbye, never even left a note. She’d just disappear.”
Khloé’s lips parted. “That’s fucking cowardly, not to mention a total bitch-move.”
“I’d call her on it the next time she showed up, and she’d always say the same thing—she found goodbyes too hard. She’d also always claim it wouldn’t happen again; that she was back for good this time. I bought it, because I wanted to. I don’t like to give up on people, and I hated that she seemed to have given up on herself, so I gave her more chances than I should have.”
“What made you stop giving her chances?”
He slipped his hands under Khloé’s tee and splayed them on her back. “When she turned up at my doorstep nine years ago, I’d already decided I was done—I’d accepted that she wasn’t going to change. I was also involved with someone at the time. It was just a fling, nothing serious. But it was exclusive.
“Thea cried. Claimed to love me. Claimed she really meant to stay with me. She made me all kinds of promises, and she may have even meant them for a short time. Or maybe she just didn’t like that I was involved with another woman and wanted to be sure I ended it.” He sighed. “I should have known better than to buy her bullshit.”
“She disappeared again?”
“Yes. And then I was officially done. My demon had already given up on her long before that, so it was pleased that she’d be out of the picture from then on.” He trailed his fingers down Khloé’s back, tracing the bumps of her spine. “She turned up again six years ago. She came out with the same spiel, but her words meant nothing to me. I wasn’t even tempted to buy her promises. I told her I was done, and I wasn’t nice about it. She could see that I meant it, and she left in tears. I wasn’t moved by them. The sad thing for her is that … her promises might not have been empty that time.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A few weeks later, she joined another lair. Soon after that, she took a mate, and she eventually had a child with him.”
Ah. Khloé fingered the small, bumpy logo on his tee. “Do you regret not giving her one last chance?”
“No. I was glad she was done with the stray lifestyle—it’s fucking dangerous. But little by little over the years, she’d killed everything I felt for her. I’d never have been able to trust a word she said. Trust is important to me.”
Khloé had sensed that much for herself. “Why did she come to your building just now?”
He pinned her gaze with his. “If I answer that question, you’d need to keep the story to yourself. Only a select number of people in my lair know about this. If you don’t feel comfortable keeping secrets from your Prime or your girls, you need to let this go.”
“I would never betray a person’s confidence. Whatever you tell me stays between us.”
Keenan figured that, given how jaded and cynical he was, he should have experienced a moment of doubt. But he found that he trusted Khloé to keep his secrets, and so did his demon.
Nodding, he started doodling circles on her lower back. “Thea came to our lair recently, seeking sanctuary.” He told her everything—about the death of Thea’s mate, about Gavril’s accusation, about Thea’s claim that her Prime was telling lies and simply wanted to get his hands on her son. “It makes me a bastard, I know, but I probably would have turned her away if it hadn’t been for her kid. You see, I know what it’s like to be that kid.”
Khloé smoothed her hands over his shoulders. “What do you mean?”
He hated revisiting his past. Hated it. But he worried that Khloé would think he hadn’t objected to Thea’s request for sanctuary because he still cared for her. He needed his little imp to understand why he’d felt unable to turn his back on the boy.
“My mother got pregnant to a mated demon in her lair,” he said. “The son of the Prime. He’d seduced her with his gifts, putting her into a suggestible state—incubi can do that. My mother was a chameleon. She could change her appearance, become anyone. And he lied and said that she had posed as his mate. Said mate believed him and insisted on her being tossed out of the lair.”
