“Will you wait for me? I could help you.”
Her smile turned wry. “How could you help me, Sean?”
His mouth opened, but nothing emerged. Any help he might givewould involve touching her—now completely taboo—and this was the closest they had come to acknowledging the change between them.
“I guess…I can’t,” he said. “But I worry about you.”
Anna looked down at her fidgeting hands. “We’ll also have to stop training together.”
He laughed once but stopped at her serious expression. “What? No.”
Her head tilted, questioning.
“We could…I don’t know. Wear gloves. And scarves.”
“Suddenly start wearing gloves and scarves to training? You don’t think that would be suspicious?”
He expelled a breath, frustrated. “We’re just friends.”
“I know.” She sank into her chair, her posture finally crumpling. “I know that. But why?—”
She cut herself off, and he didn’t fill the silence.
Because that was the question, right? Why? Why did Anna feel like electric paradise? When had her skin gathered the ability to light his on fire?
Curiosities had evolved that he couldn’t ignore. The desire to slide his hand over her neck and taste the curve of her shoulder had woken and wouldn’t go back to sleep. Something irrevocable had changed inside him. Before Isobel, he’d never wanted someone like this, and he’d been told that was normal for pixies. Sexual impulses only appeared after the heart was involved, and these impulses were clear as the blue in her eyes.
When the hell had this happened?
“We can’t do this,” she whispered, sparkling eyes lifting toward his.
His gaze fell to her mouth. “We’re not doing anything.”
This shouldn’t be happening. He had Isobel. Anna had a…thing with David. Sort of. These feelings were never supposed to happen. They only existed because of a magical bond somewhere in Sean’s soul.
Right?
“Hopefully I’ll be out of here tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah. Of course.” He swallowed and tore his gaze from her. “I should go.”
He jerked from his seat and headed toward the door, but her voice stopped him.
“Sean?”
“Yeah?” he asked without looking at her.
“Thank you,” she said, voice small, “for everything.”
CHAPTER 39
ANNA
Weeks passed before she was well enough to leave the Sovereign Suite. The headache lingered, but it no longer made her dizzy every time she stood. The gray creature never returned, and she’d stopped trying to puzzle out what its message meant.
She belonged to no one. Of that she was certain.
In a soft white tunic and Isobel’s too-large leggings, Anna shuffled to the main living area at a time when she thought everyone would be out. She retreated, however, when the main door opened just as she reached for the knob.
