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“Nothing. I’m drunk. Going to bed,” I tell her and keep going, through the doors and up the stairs into the house.
I get all the way to the top floor when I hear Solon coming up quickly on the stairs behind me, so fast that one moment he’s at the bottom level of the house and the next he’s standing behind me.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asks me, reaching out and pulling me to a stop just outside the door to our bedroom.
“I’m drunk,” I tell him with a scowl, trying to rip my arm from his grasp. His grip is too strong.
“I can see that. How much did you drink?”
“Enough to feel normal again.”
“And is your normal getting pissy at me for no reason?”
My mouth drops. “No reason?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m not a mind reader.”
“Yes you are!” I exclaim, throwing my arms out. “You are a mind reader.”
“Lenore,” he says with tried patience, “I don’t understand what’s bothering you about what happened. You’re mad because, what, because you thought…?”
I finally get my arm out of his grasp and poke my finger into his chest. “You tied me down to the bed. You had Wolf go down on me.”
He blinks at me in disbelief. “You were begging for it.”
“I was begging for you, not him.”
He raises his chin. “You were in agony, Lenore. We gave you a way out.”
“I couldn’t take the way out because I was in agony. And yes, I’m grateful, for lack of a better word, that he was there to do what you refused to. I would have gone mad otherwise, I know that. I would have hurt myself, I’m sure. But…you told me that we had sex for days.”
“You did,” he says stiffly.
I close my eyes, frustration rolling through me. “You could have been clearer about what you consider sex.”
“You don’t consider that sex?”
I fix my eyes on him. “Semantics. I thought Wolf was screwing me. He wasn’t. And why is that?”
His gaze sharpens. “Now you want to know why he wasn’t screwing you?”
“Yeah. If it’s all the same to you.”
“I never said it was the same,” he says quickly, a dark look coming over his brow.
“Then why did you let me believe it? Why did you let me think it?”
He sighs tiredly, running his hand over his face. “Why the questions, moonshine?”
“Because,” I say, knowing the tequila is causing a lot of trouble for me at the moment. I don’t mean to fight with him. “Because I’m in love with you, Solon. I’m in love with you and sometimes I just…I just get scared. I get scared that I’m in over my head with you, because what I feel is very deep and very real and it’s…it’s forever, for lack of a better word. It’s forever and it’s supernatural and it’s a big, dark love. And you, you’re this…you’re still this enigma, this mystery to me. I have no idea how you think. You may have watched me when I was younger, seen me grown up, but I don’t have that same privilege with you. I know next to nothing about you, and that’s okay, I know I have a lifetime ahead of us, but we’re standing on uneven footing here. You’ll always have the upper hand. We’re not equals.”
“Not equals?” he whispers harshly. He reaches out and grabs my face between his hands, holding me as his eyes roam my face. “Lenore, you are my equal in every single way.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like it. Not when you’ve got so much life behind you, more than any creature ever should. It feels like it will be centuries before I know everything about you.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” he asks softly. “To spend those centuries with me, getting to know who I am?”
“No. No, of course not. But it’s hard when there’s no mystery when it comes to me. Like you say, I wear my emotions on my sleeve. What you see is what you get. I’m twenty-one years old Solon, how the hell am I even compelling enough to be with someone like you?”
“You compel me, my dear,” he says. “Your emotions compel me. Your softness, your heart. The fact that right now you’re telling me all these things, these truths about you, things I didn’t expect to hear, that compels me. I know that we may seem different, that there are differences between us, but they have no bearing on how deeply I feel about you.”
I look away, my heart fluttering.
“Look,” he says quietly. He clears his throat. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth about what happened with Wolf, not because it wasn’t a big deal, but because I…I wanted to see if you’d care.”
I stare dumbly at him. “You wanted to see if I would care? What are you, twelve?”
