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She shook her head back and forth. “Has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely insane?”
“Yes,” I muttered darkly. “Me. No one else need tell me such a thing. I remind myself daily. I have done so since the day I met you.”
“So, I’ve made you both weak and crazy. Anything else you want to blame me for?”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I blame myself for not understanding how to be worthy of you. I have tried to make you love me every way that I know how.” I sounded pathetic. Iwaspathetic. “Instead, I’ve fallen apart. Shown you everything I lack. And I have only earned your pity.”
“Pity...” Her face was white, her eyes piercing. “You think Ipitiedyou that night? You think I stayed with you, let you touch me, that I kissed you back, because I felt sorry for you? That wasn’t pity! That wascare. Against all sanity and reason, I’m starting to care for you! And,fuck, Errok, I wish I didn’t care. Because it’s making me just as crazy as you are! If anyone deserves pity here, it’sme! For losing my mind over an absolute idiot of a Gahn like you!”
“What does that mean, ‘care’?” I asked, not allowing myself to dare to hope. If I hoped, and I was wrong, I’d never come back from that despair.
Care could be many things.
Care could be something close to love for a mate.
But then again, one could also care for an animal who couldn’t walk straight because it had had a rock dropped upon its head as an infant.
“It... It means.... It means that it hurt when you pushed me away, that’s what!”
I swallowed, my throat tight and dry. So that was what she’d meant earlier? When she said I’d hurt her?
“How could that have hurt you?” I asked, not understanding her at all.Like usual.“You have made it clear, over and over again, that you take little pleasure in my company.”
“Well, I took pleasure in it that night.”
“That night...” When I was injured. When I was afraid.
“And before you jump to any conclusions, I don’t mean that I enjoyed seeing you in pain. But...” She bit her lip, looking so miserable that I wanted to punch myself in the face. “But you let me see parts of you that I don’t think you show to anyone else. You let me in.”
“I didn’tletyou in,” I hissed. “I dragged you, desperately, practically against both our wills.”
“Not against my will.” She took a steadying breath. “I let you touch me, and I touched you, too, because I wanted to. I held you and kissed you back because I wantedyou. Not because I was just trying to make you feel better.”
Oh, no. I am so far gone that I am starting to hallucinate.
And the hallucination was apparently not just auditory, but tactile. She reached a hand for me, placing her palm flat on the place she’d healed me. And it was like I’d been torn open all over again.
“This isn’t easy for me either, you know,” she murmured. “You were right when you said that we’re more alike than I’d realized.” She traced a slow circle over my skin, making my muscles clench. “I thought that we’d gotten closer. But then you told me not to come back. To sleep in another cave. I was angry because... Well, you are infuriating, let’s be real. But it was mostly to cover up the hurt.”
“I had to,” I groaned as her fingers drifted slowly lower, across my taut abdominal muscles. “I couldn’t risk... Couldn’t have you near me... When I wasn’t...Myself.” My breath was hitching, making my words stutter out of me.
“You said that before. That you weren’t yourself that night.”
Her fingers stopped their torturous caress, curling into a fist against my stomach.
“But the Errok I was with that night is the one who convinced me that maybe I’d been wrong about you. He convinced me that I could... I could maybe even love someone like you. But if that wasn’t really you, then I don’t know where that leaves us.”
I stared down at her, wide-eyed and shaken.
“But here’s the thing,” she said softly. “I think that really was you. I think it’s the part you hide. But if you want me with you, if you want me to trust you and maybe even love you, you can’t hide anymore.”
I’d wanted her to make me into something worthy.
Instead, she was going to tear me apart.
And I knew that I could do nothing but let her.
She grasped my hands and pulled them back down to the mattress so that I was once again leaning down over her. She put her soft arms around my neck, and I nearly lost myself in her scent.
