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I ease closer, taking his other hand and gazing up into his dark eyes. “You know more than anyone else what it’s like to have something monstrous in you that takes over if you lose control of your emotions. To be afraid of how you’ll react if you’re pushed too far.”
Zee frowns, stroking his thumb over my elbow. “Is someone pushing you?”
“I don’t know. It’s just—after Rollick had me practice my shriek on Jake and Drey this afternoon—” I exhale in a ragged rush. “I keep remembering how angry I got when Balthazar had us trapped. I don’t know how I’m going to feel when we find him, thinking of all the awful things he’s done since.”
“We’ve been in a lot of intense fights before,” Zian points out. “You’ve never hurt any of us accidentally.”
“It’s not just you guys, though. We know that at least Nadia and Devon are being held in the Romanian base, and there’ll be other shadowbloods there. Even if they were criminals, we don’t know what crimes they committed or why.We’vedone illegal things trying to survive. Balthazar could be forcing them—they don’t necessarily deserve to die like he does.”
Zee is silent for a moment as if thinking over what I’ve said. “You’re afraid that you’ll be so angry when we’re confronting him that you might take too much of it out on them?”
I sigh and tip my head against his chest—tentatively, giving him time to back away if it’s too much physical closeness. “Something like that. I just have no idea how it’s going to be.”
Zian tenses for only an instant before he slides his brawny arm right around me, holding me against his huge frame. “You don’t seem angry like you did before, when it was really bad. Back then, we didn’t have anything to hope for. We’re free now, and we’ve got strong allies and a good plan. I don’t think you’d feel that ‘pushed’ again.”
I relax a little into his embrace as I absorb his words. “That’s true. It’s not the same situation.”
“And anyway, the whole plan is about getting to Balthazar before he knows he needs to defend himself. If his new shadowbloods attack us after he’s dead, then that’s their choice, nothing he’s making them do. We’ve all agreed that if we have to fight any of them beforehand, we’ll knock them out rather than killing them unless we absolutely have to.”
“It’s hard to believe it’ll be that easy.”
“Yeah.” Zian lets out a rough chuckle and pulls back just enough to look down at me. “But the most important thing is stopping Balthazar, right? Stopping him and the new shadowbloods from hurting more people. That’s got to be the right thing to do. And the shadowbloods he made—they’re not really the same as us. They haven’t been through all the stuff we and the kids have.”
I know what he means, but something inside me resists accepting it. We might not have the same history as the criminals Balthazar has forced into his army, but we’re the only people who can understand what they are, that unnerving mix of human and monster.
Talking to him has smoothed out the sharpest edges of my worries, though.
I give him a slight smile and realize I don’t really want to leave. I want to stay right here with the comfort of his solid warmth.
Zee and I haven’t had much time to enjoy his deepening recovery fromhistraumatic past. Even the one time we had sex, we weren’t alone. He wanted Dominic there to intervene if one of his violent panics came over him.
I roll the question around on my tongue before allowing myself to speak. “Could I sleep here tonight?”
Zian stiffens, but the flash of emotion that crosses his face is more elation than anything else. The pheromones of desire lace the air. “You—you’d really want to? I might still react badly, especially when I’m not really conscious…”
I squeeze his hand in mine. “I’m not worried. I can get out of the way if you lash out, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. You don’t have any bad associations withbeds, right?”
A hopeful smile curls the corner of his lips. “No, I don’t.” As he holds my gaze, a deeper smolder comes into his eyes, the scent of his eagerness thickening. “Did you only want tosleep?”
When he says it like that, with a soft growl of hunger in his voice, my whole body wakes up with my own desire. A quiver of anticipation shoots through my nerves.
I smile back at him. “I can think of lots of other things we can do in bed that I’m sure I’d enjoy.”
With a rough noise in his throat, Zian cups my jaw and lifts my face to meet his kiss.
The press of his mouth against mine isn’t as tentative as our first explorations with intimacy. He’s still gentle, but his lips coax mine apart with a sear of his breath. As he deepens the kiss, he tugs me even closer.
It’s a greater thrill than I can express to be able to loop my arms around his neck and give myself over to the moment, knowing he’s shaken off the pain of the past enough that he welcomes my touch.
Without warning, Zian slips his arm down my side and hefts me into the air like I weigh nothing at all. His mouth still melded with mine, he walks me over to the bed and lays me out on the covers.
As he looms over me, he eases back from the kiss. His lips brand my cheek, my neck.
“There are so many things I’ve imagined doing with you. So many things I want to try.”
I beam up at him, tracing the ridges of his impressive chest through the thin fabric of his tee. “We can do all of them—tonight or later. I’m looking forward to everything.”
He pauses and catches my gaze. “Did you like everything we did last time? Everything that happened… even at the end?”
