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With an intense look on his handsome face, he asked, “What else?”
Jade debated how far she should go, but she suspected there wasn’t much she could hold back from this man. As though he’d innately know she was keeping something from him.
Reaching out a hand to him, palm up, she said, “Your dagger.”
His expression turned skeptical and a bit concerned.
Jade laughed softly. “I’ll admit I’m a strong fighter, but I’m not going to attempt to stab you in the heart.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She smirked at him.
With much reticence in his voice, he said, “Actually, that’s not at all my worry.”
Regardless of his tentativeness, he unsheathed the dagger at his hip and laid it in her palm. She wrapped the fingers of her other hand around the handle and slowly drew the sharp blade over her flesh, slicing it wide open.
“Jade!” Darien lunged forward and wrested the knife from her grasp.
The pain in her hand radiated throughout her body. It was excruciating, a fact that never failed to astonish her. The agony was tenfold, or more, what it should be. Even a mere pinprick felt like a brutal stabbing. And the emotional wounds were worse. Michael pulling away from her years ago had made her feel as though she’d been run through with a sword.
She gripped the wrist of the bleeding hand as her body trembled. Darien’s fingers closed around her biceps and he tried to direct her to a chair.
“Sit,” he demanded.
“Just wait,” she ground out as tears flooded her eyes.
She fisted her injured hand and rotated it several degrees, so the blood streamed to the stone floor. A few tense minutes slid by and the flow became a mere trickle. Her breath still came in heavy pulls, but the pain ebbed into a more tolerable and less debilitating sensation. She suspected a good ten minutes slipped by until, eventually, not a single drop fell. Opening her hand, she extended it toward him, palm up.
Darien stared at the healed flesh in blatant amazement. He asked, “Where’d the blood go?”
Her flesh should have been covered by it. She said, “I absorb any blood on my skin. Part of the regenerative cycle, I guess.”
“That’s extraordinary,” he said in a low voice. “You’re human. But are you mortal?”
Her laugh was a hollow one. “Not that I’ve tested the theory—nor do I care to—but, yes. If I sustain enough injuries, I won’t be able to concentrate on healing myself.”
He studied her hand a few seconds more, then released it. “You rapidly heal, yet I could
see how painful that cut was, more so than it really should have been.”
“I can’t explain it, other than to surmise it’s some sort of internal checks and balance system. As though my ability to fix my body in an abnormally short amount of time is offset by the agony of the injury. As if it’s a penalty for possessing such a gift. The pain is sometimes unbearable, but if I can rise above it, the wounds heal.”
“Do they really?” he questioned in a dark tone.
Jade wiped tears from her cheeks. “I suffer from an acute reaction to pain, yes. But I survive it.”
“That explains so much. I understood the toll your parents’ deaths took on you. But the heartache you felt with your friend, Michael. It was tortuous. You were so young to feel that emotionally devastated. It was…horrific to experience.”
“That’ll teach you to head-hop.”
“Indeed.”
She’d meant the comment as a flip remark, but he clearly took it seriously. And a step further.
“Tonight, when you’re alone in your cottage, you’ll think of Jinx. Won’t you?”
Jade swallowed down a lump of emotion. “Of course.”
