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He ran his soft lips over the shell of my ear. “I’m capable of taking care of you, you know. You don’t have to run to Leo or Atticus. Or even my mother. I can protect you. I can keep you safe. I’d burn down the bloody castle to keep you at my side. And I might not have proven that three years ago, but I’m going to fucking prove it now.” He moved his hand from between my thighs and cupped my face with both hands. “Stop running from me.”
“I didn’t run from you,” I whispered.
“Oh? So you didn’t sprint down the hallway after grinding your clit against my tongue? You didn’t drop a bomb in my lap and leave without another word? What did you do, Christine? Enlighten me.”
“I was scared, okay?” I admitted. I’d worked damn hard to avoid being scared ever since Lord Geralt ruined my innocence.
“Of me?” August asked, taking a step back.
I shook my head. “Of that look.”
He furrowed his brow. “What look?”
“Pity. Fear. Disgust. I didn’t want to see the boy I love look at me like I was a murderer.”
He gasped and I realized where I went wrong. I said I love him.
“You caught me off guard,” he admitted, thankfully not bringing up my admission. “I’m sorry I didn’t school my expression or handle it the right way. I’m sorry I didn’t chase after you three years ago. And I’m sorry I don’t deserve you now.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, then responded, “I wish we could be what we were before all of this. It would make things so much easier. I was weak and naive, willing to compromise my own heart for the sake of yours.”
He frowned. “But we aren’t them anymore, are we?”
“No. We aren’t.”
“So what do we do?”
I took a step away from him once more. “We do what is asked of us. We follow their rules and say pretty words. We pretend.”
He closed the distance between us once more. “And what if I don’t want to pretend?”
My shoulders dropped. “Then I guess you’ll have to convince me this is real.”
Chapter Thirteen
CHRISTINE
In an instant, Leo slammed me onto the mat, his muscular arms throwing me down with ease. I was not in the right headspace to engage in a fight today, so I was unable to predict his attacks as well as I would have liked. I knew I was more than capable of taking him on. If I flipped the switch in my mind and truly unleashed all my rage, he’d be a broken mess on the training room floor. I knew his weaknesses and strengths. I knew he had an old injury on his right knee that made him favor that leg. I also knew that Leo was cocky. He relied on his brute strength to take down his opponent, but his strategy needed work. He was good at analyzing a situation, but executing that knowledge was where he had a disconnect.
I knew all of this, but I just couldn’t motivate myself to do much about it.
He pinned my arms over my head and pressed his hard body against mine. “Push me off of you.”
“I’m trying,” I said lazily. If I truly wanted to push him off of me, I would have already done so. I would have used the ballpoint pen on the ground at my side and driven it through his eye socket. If I truly wanted to win this training session, he would have already been dead.
But I didn’t want to win today. I didn’t want to snap into that training mode of kill or be killed with Leo.
“Come on,” he urged before pinning me harder.
“This is boring,” I mumbled, even though my cheeks were flushed. My mind was preoccupied and it felt impossible to focus.
Yesterday’s press tour had drained me, and I was raw from my interaction with both Atticus and August.
He knew.
They both knew.
All of them knew what had happened to me that fateful night three years ago, and it was a relief to have my truth out in the open, but also a burden.
