Page 55 of A Trial By Blood

“Yes, but I…maybe I could have…” His brows snapped together, and his jaw tightened again.

He had no answer. No logical response. He was being ruled by emotion not logic, not anymore. Not now, at least.

“I’m angry,” he finally said. “And other things. I don’t like it. I have this sense of spinning, of being…out of control.” He glanced at me again. “How can you stand it? How do you live with it? I feel as if I’m losing my mind.”

“You can’t hold on to the anger. It’s not good to keep that bottled up inside you. If you keep holding on to those feelings, you won’t have room for all the other wonderful emotions you have the ability to feel, the ones that make you feel good.”

He looked at me, and his violet eyes were so bright, so beautiful, his face so stunningly handsome in his anger, I wanted to lean over and kiss him.

“What will I feel?” he asked.

His voice was impossibly deep, gravelly, not Ronan’s voice, not entirely, because now it held notes of what he was feeling, even if he didn’t fully understand what that was. “Happiness, humor, affection.” Don’t say it. “Desire—love.”

His Adam’s apple slid up and down as he drove, drawing my attention to it, and my hunger intensified. I told myself I wasn’t going to push for anything from him, and yet I just couldn’t help myself, could I? I had to go and remind him of the things I’d said the night he almost took my life.

“I understand some of the emotions I’m feeling. Anger, of course. When I was young, I had emotions, and I’ve regained a kind of visceral memory of some of them. Happiness, I know how that feels as well. Luna and I would play and laugh, and I remember the way it felt. Affection and love. I’d felt that for both my mother and sister, I know that, and I think I feel that way again. But I also understand there is more than one form of love, one I’ve never had the opportunity to experience.”

That hurt when it shouldn’t. Of course, he hadn’t regained his emotions and fallen instantly in love with me. That would be ridiculous. Still, it stung more than it should.

“As for desire…”

My gaze shot to him. His gorgeous eyes came to me and the color deepened before he looked back to the road. “Yes?”

“I’ve experienced it.”

“You have?” My heart was suddenly thundering in my chest. Could he hear it? Of course he could.

“Yes.”

“Is it new to you, or something you felt before you regained your emotions?” Shut up, Rose!

“I never felt it before now.” He glanced at me again, his stare dipping to my lips before he looked away. “And it seems to be one of the most difficult emotions to gain control over. I’m not sure I like the way it makes me feel.”

“You don’t like it?” My heart sank a little. Okay, a lot.

“I don’t like the out-of-control feeling it gives me.” He flexed his fingers around the wheel. “Base, like an animal. It’s all-consuming and makes it hard to focus on anything else.”

“It’ll get easier,” I said, and goddess, my voice was all breathy. “Desire can be something wonderful. I never really experienced it either. I was too sick—”

“And now?” His eyes sharpened when they came back to me. “You feel it?”

“Yes,” the word came out a whisper.

“And you can control it?” he asked.

My face heated. Control, yes. Ease? No. “Um…yes, I can control myself.” Barely.

He was quiet for several seconds. “Relic told me how to ease the intensity of the feeling. But it didn’t last long.”

“He did?” Hang on, did he mean…No, he couldn’t mean what I thought he meant.

“Yes.” His movements grew jerkier.

Don’t. Don’t ask. “A physical…um, easing?”

“Yes.” He frowned, and color tinged his cheeks.

He was blushing. I’d never seen him blush, not ever. Ronan had never had a filter, had no concept of what was appropriate or not, and he obviously still didn’t, but that blush told me he was starting to learn.