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“Yes.”
Relief brought tears to her eyes, but she fought them down and instead laced her fingers with Aric’s. “Take me with you. I wanted to not be a burden on you with whatever Denham’s obsession is, but it’s clear you’re going to get dragged in. Just as it’s clear I’m involved. So take me with you, please, and let me see this through.” Her throat swelled at what she needed to say next. It was only fair. After what she’d done, she couldn’t make assumptions. “You can dump me anywhere you like after. I’ll understand.”
He arched a brow and a low hum rumbled past his lips. “Anywhere I like?” He tugged her up to his chest and curved his other arm around her back but never broke eye-contact. “So if Idump youin my bed and tie you there, you won’t complain?”
Heat flashed through her and Rochelle held her breath for a second. “Aric,” she finally said, “that’s— I—” How was she supposed to explain?
“No ties?”
She pouted thoughtlessly. He knew damn well that wasn’t what she was trying to say. “I left,” she finally blurted.
“Yes. And I had every intention of coming for you just as soon as Denham, and Cecilia, were dealt with.”
Her mouth opened, but no words followed.
He moved his hand to cup her cheek. “Did you think I would let you go so easily?”
She sucked in a breath. “I didn’t—Idon’t—want to come between you and the people in your life. I don’t want to ruin what you have.”
“You haven’t ruined anything,” Aric said. He pressed a kiss to the apple of her cheek. “Cecilia is to blame for her own behavior, and the pain it causes the rest of us. Not you.” He met her gaze again. “I would have found you and brought you back home that very morning, if a misunderstanding of feelings were all we had hanging over our heads. You belong with me, Rochelle. I am willing to let you stretch your wings, but I will not let you go.”
Tears rolled, hot and fast, from her eyes. She had honestly hoped he’d read her note and confession and had been a bit relieved by her choice to leave. She’d hoped her feelings had been stronger than his and for that reason any care he felt would be overridden by the desire to escape the clutches of a woman claiming love. Not because she didn’t want him to love her, but because she hadn’t wanted him to hurt as badly as she had with her decision. It sounded like it had gone the other way, though he was carefully avoiding those particular words.
Aric pressed his lips to her forehead and wiped her face with his thumbs. “This is nothing to cry over,” he said gently. “Few things in life run smoothly from the beginning.”
She gasped for breath and clutched onto his shirt once more. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you—”
“Rochelle.”
She lifted her head, realizing she’d dropped her gaze again. “Please … don’t let me go.”
He smiled, captured her lips in a searing kiss, and hooked an arm around her waist. “There’s just something we’ll have to mop up first. If you’re sure you want to come along.”
Rochelle pulled in a deep breath, her head spinning and her body thrumming, and nodded. “I’m sure.”
****
The woman was going to drive him insane. Two minutes back in his arms and she’d actually suggested he just abandon her somewhere as if she meant nothing to him. He would probably have dropped her immediately off at the estate under Tinsley’s care if she hadn’t, apparently, also learned her own form of teleportation magic. A fact that was both amazing and troublesome. Since leaving her out of whatever confrontation remained was no longer an option, Aric dropped the idea of it and forced himself to focus on the other important things their brief conversation had revealed.
Most critically was that Denham, somehow, was quite possibly the explanation for Rochelle’s existence in their world. Which begged the question of whether or not Denham had something to do with Aric’s strange circumstance as well, though it was a question Aric had no real intention of asking. He was much more curious as to how Denham acquired even theknowledgeof other worlds, let alone the ability to reach into or manipulate them.
And what part of any of that explained Cecilia’s clear connection to him?
None of those answers would come until he took them back to that forest, so with Rochelle’s hand in his, Aric propelled them back across Yafae. The waterfall archway and rocky mountainside disappeared in an instant, and the world around them took on the different yet familiar shape of the forest behind Caram. For safety purposes, he’d transported them just shy of where he’d left the others.
They should have had a perfect view of the entire group.
What they saw instead were the crumbled remains of a stone wall, upheaved earth, a pair of burning pine trees, and what looked suspiciously like splattered blood. There were no captives, bound or otherwise. None of his team were present, in any condition.
“Aric?” Rochelle asked, her fingers tightening around his.
“Keep your guard up,” he said. He took a beat to extinguish the fire already attempting to spread to a third tree. The last complication they needed was to let a wildfire explode in the forest barely one mountain away from Yafae’s most populated city.
Rochelle let out a breath when the fire snuffed out. “Where do you think everyone is?”
Aric swept his focus outward. “There was a portal not far from here. I assume it’s how Denham transported you after convincing the official rescuers to turn away.”
“But he could go anywhere from there.”
