Page 292 of Immune

“Then I’ll close the door,” I promise.

“You think you can?” she wonders, eyeing me closely.

“Yup,” I answer with a shrug and a small twitch of my lips.

Her eyes narrow. “That’s arrogant.”

“I like to call it experienced,” I argue calmly, and it makes her pause.

I don’t talk about my father often. I don’t like giving him space in rooms he has no right to even linger in. But he’s already here. He always is when instinct starts wearing a fucking crown.

“My father liked to believe wanting something made it his,” I tell her.

Dakota’s eyes sharpen.

“If he wanted obedience, he took it. If he wanted silence, he’d force it. If he wanted fear, then he would go out of his way to build a house out of it and make us live there.”

Her face changes.

Anger. For me.

I don’t let that touch me yet.

“He called that instinct. Nature. Truth.”

“Sounds like a major dick.”

The corner of my mouth shifts despite myself, and I nod. “Oh, yeah, he was.”

She nods slowly, and I hold her gaze when I say, “He was also incredibly wrong.”

Her jaw tightens then.

“Wanting isn’t the problem,” I tell her. “What you do with it is.”

She looks down at the weapons on the floor again, and then back at me. “So you think if you can stand there wanting me and not taking, then I can want you and not lose myself?”

“Yup.”

Her breathing changes again, growing slower and deeper. Like the idea is niggling its way through her body one stubborn inch at a time.

“And if I do?” she eventually asks.

“Lose yourself?”

She only nods.

“Then I’ll bring you right back,” I promise.

“How?”

“In whatever way you’ll let me.”

Her eyes drop to my mouth, and the vibe in the room changes so suddenly my stomach clenches.

It’s not soft.

It’s definitely not sweet.