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“Guys?” I started to push the throw off my lap only to have a pillow flop into it by Lavena.
“It’s your turn to clean up,” she stated, already headed towards the door with the other two hot on her heels.
I sat there, dumbfounded, racking my brain trying to remember when that had become a rule. We usually cleaned up together. Everyone tidied up their own mess. The sitting area was a tangle of rumpled blankets, discarded pillows, and empty wine glasses.
“What the hell?” I muttered before realizing I wasn’t alone.
Darius grinned as he unfurled from his seat with the grace and elegance of a predator. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to…”
But he was already snatching up pillows and shaking off crumbs. Swallowing down my exhale, I stood and began gathering my own blanket. I folded the material and tossed it neatly over the back of the armchair. I organized the pillowsback into place, then reached for the mini bed Sasha and Kas had made on the floor.
I heard Darius come up behind me as I bent and gathered the throws. My spine prickled with awareness, but I kept my focus, fixing all my attention on aligning each corner. I was painfully aware of him snatching up the pillows with his big hands and placing them on their rightful sofas. When he returned to help me with the blankets, I panicked.
“I got this,” I blurted.
He already had the cream-colored knit in his grasp. It was shaken out and the corners were brought together.
“You’re upset with me,” he said instead, ignoring me completely.
I turned to him, slightly confused. “I’m not upset with you,” I said honestly.
He paused in his folding to meet my gaze. “Hurt then.” I couldn’t lie to that. My attention shifted to my hands, and I heard him sigh. “Kam—”
“Don’t,” I whispered. “I’m fine. I’m a big girl.”
The throw dropped from his hand, unraveling as it hit the ground by his feet. His now empty fingers extended to touch my elbow. The calluses on each fingertip scratched my skin, sending a tingle up my arm.
“Kam,” he said again lightly, luring me with his warm, husky murmur to peer up into his hypnotic eyes. He bore down into my face, his expression a mixture of regret and annoyance. “Go to bed, kitten. I’ll finish this.”
He took the blanket from my grasp and turned away from me.
Just like that, I was dismissed. He couldn’t even take two seconds to face me, to tell me in the light why we couldn’t be together. He needed the cloak of darkness like we were some kind of sin that needed to be hidden.
“You’re being an idiot,” I snapped before I could stop myself, before my brain could register what exactly I was flinging at the hard wall of his back.
A full heartbeat erupted between us, a hush before a brewing storm. I felt rather than saw the rising tension in his shoulders and back as he straightened to his full, murderous height
His chin turned slowly over one shoulder until I was captured in the hard glint of his eyes, but I was fueled by every ounce of my own emotions. My happiness at seeing him. My confusion by his rejection. My pain at waiting so long for a man who could so easily push me away. There was no going back.
“What did you say?”
In it now, I plowed on. “You’re being an idiot,” I repeated slower, but with a very clear tremor in my voice. “You think I’m the same eight-year-old little girl you used to know who needs protecting—”
He turned, a dangerously slow turn on his heel until I was under the full scrutiny of his gaze. “You have not been an eight-year-old in my eyes in a very long time.”
“Your sister’s friend then,” I corrected. “Some helpless girl who—”
“Not even that.”
I swallowed hard, kicking myself for not properly thinking out my argument before confronting him. “What then? Why—?”
“Who do you think I am, Kamari?” He took a step forward with the hard annunciation of my name in a way I had never heard him use before. “What do you see when you look at me?”
The man I’d been in love with since I was eighteen came to mind, but there was a halo of fury radiating around him, warning me to pick my words carefully. Proclaiming my love for him would probably get me strangled.
“I don’t know what you’re asking,” I said instead, going for dumb.
