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I landed on top of him, with our chests pressing together. My face was tucked up against his neck, and I didn’t mind that at all. He was warm, and his skin was soft.
“You better not have been about to tell me you’re too old for snuggling, Sweetheart. No one’s too old for snuggling.”
“You would know that better than me,” I mumbled into his neck.
He chuckled, tightening his arms around me. “I’ve missed cuddling up next to you on the couch. Let’s never fight again.”
“That seems like an unrealistic goal.”
“Or a difficult decision.”
“You’re very good at avoiding the truth, Alexander. While we were fighting, do you know what I realized?”
He considered it for a moment. “No. What did you realize?” His hand moved over my back, his touch gentle.
“You never gave me a genuine answer as to why you gave me your blood in the first place. You started the bond when you did that—you made me reliant on you.”
He let out a long breath. “I wish I had a good answer, but I don’t. I was pretty sure you were my potential mate when we went to rescue you, but I wasn’t positive until I found Bash feeding you. I thought you’d be better off without me, so I picked up blood from Rafe’s friends to feed you.”
His hand started moving in slow circles on my back. “Every night when I closed my eyes, I saw your teeth in my brother’s neck. Your arms around his body. I couldn’t sleep—I could hardly fucking breathe. I had a hard time stopping myself from trying to kill him.”
My throat swelled.
“I fought the idea as long as I could, but I was losing my mind. After a few days, I called a lab. Offered them a bunch of money to send a phlebotomist out to me. She was here within half an hour, and left me with the first blood bags. I came to my senses and put them in the back of the freezer… but obviously, that didn’t work out. I couldn’t handle the thought of someone else keeping you alive.”
“I didn’t know you had issues with Bash after that,” I admitted.
“He doesn’t know I did either. I kept quiet about it. Logically, I knew I couldn’t be the one you drank from when we first found you. If I had, you would’ve been addicted to me right off the bat, and you would’ve had to drink from my veins, to make sure my body healed in time to feed you as frequently as you needed to eat.”
I grimaced, eyes still shut, and face pressed to his neck. “Well, thank you for telling me the truth.”
There was a moment’s pause.
My stomach clenched.
There was something else he hadn’t told me.
“I’d like a complete pardon from my past actions before I tell you the rest of the truth.”
I couldn’t stop myself from snorting.
The request was so very Zander that I couldn’t stop myself from being amused by it.
“Fine.”
“A complete pardon means you aren’t allowed to be angry, fight with me, or change your mind about things you’ve already agreed to,” he warned.
“What did you do?”
He sighed. “Imayhave watched you through security cameras. Not when you were in the privacy of your own home, but most of the time when you weren’t.”
I groaned.
“Allof the time you weren’t home,” he amended.
“You seriously stalked me? You do realize that puts you in the same league as Evan?”
“I didn’t trust your security team to keep a close enough eye on you,” he protested. “And I wasn’t sending perverted texts, or threatening you.”
