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It was that ache that pulled the truth from me. “Do you recall your last night in my world?”
“It was all of three weeks ago. Yeah, it’s still pretty fresh in my mind.”
That knocked me back a step. “Three weeks? That’s all?” In my realm, I’d been pining over her, turning over every stone I could find, calling in every favor I’d ever been owed for months. Many, many months.
Her expression softened a little. “Why? How long has it been for you?”
I shook my head. “A good bit longer. Which is neither here nor there.” It did, however, leave me with questions. “The important thing is what happened that night.”
She unfolded her arms and boosted herself up onto her desk, letting her feet dangle. “I remember what happened.”
But did she understand it?
I pulled in a breath and let it slowly as I considered my phrasing. “Do you recall a moment that night, during our time together, when you might have felt something strange?” I couldn’t even think of how to put it properly. “Perhaps like an opening or a welcoming of some kind.”
Never studied me through narrowed lids. “No.” My heart sank a thousand leagues into the depths in the time it took her to continue. “But I felt something...” she pressed her hand to her chest right over her fragile human heart. “Crack.”
Relief flooded me. The connection was real. That was a fact, but had she not recalled the moment, I would have been profoundly disappointed. Because there was a part of me that wanted to explain everything to her, but in a very different setting. Like over a fine meal and with a glass of wine. Not perched on her small bed, in her depressing apartment, while two grown shifters with superhuman hearing were mere paces away and her brother was playing the unwilling host to a demonic shadow.
Alas, beggars could not be choosers.
“That crack was, in a sense, a gift from you to me,” I said quietly.
Her responding expression was understandably skeptical.
“I asked you to give yourself to me that night. What you felt was precisely that.”
Skepticism turned to thinly veiled hostility in the space of a second. “I gave myself to you? Could you do a girl favor and break that down for me, third-grade style?” When I raised a brow in confusion, she huffed out an impatient breath. “Tell me, in small words, whatpreciselyyou mean.”
“You gave me a piece of yourself. Your inner self.”
“Are you talking about my soul?” she asked, her tone entirely too calm for the wild energy pulsing from her. It would seem, the longer we were in each other’s company, the stronger the connection grew.
Interesting. Also, potentially troublesome.
I nodded.
“For fuck’s sake, pirate.That’swhat you were asking for when you asked me to give myself to you?” She looked, well, it was hard to say. Upset, certainly. But there was more to it.
“No.” I thought about it for a moment. “Not exactly.”
She unfolded her legs, hopped off the desk, and paced a line in front of me. Back and forth, twice before she whirled on me. “Explain what the hell this means.”
“It means we’re connected.” I motioned between us. “You and I.” I pressed my palm to my chest, just as she’d done. “Here.”
Her gaze flicked between my hand and my face half a dozen times. “Connected is a very broad term, pirate. Do you... Jesus... that’s why Petra wouldn’t take me in exchange for my brother.” Her hand went to her chest. “I’m not whole anymore, am I?”
Oof. That certainly wasn’t the way I’d been hoping she would see it. I held my hands up. “Maybe gave is the wrong word. Youarewhole. It just means you’ve shared yourself with me.” I shook my head. “I feel like I’m explaining this poorly.”
“You don’t say?”
Talking wasn’t working, and the longer she kept her distance from me, the more I felt her trying to pull away. I wasn’t letting that happen.
Standing, I moved across the room to her. She put up her hands to stop me, but the time for words was past. I brushed her half-hearted attempt to stop me aside, caught her by the back of her neck, and pulled her into a kiss meant to show her everything I couldn’t seem to tell her with my words.
15
NEVER
