Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(68)

“You’re ignoring the fact that I wanted to do those good deeds.” My voice was flat. “What happens if I want to do something terrible when my other half is in control?”

Ian snorted. “Then the person you do it to will richly deserve it. You wouldn’t even murder your second-worst enemy when you thought she hadn’t remembered her foul deeds. I would’ve cheerfully slaughtered Ereshki, and I don’t have your supposedly malevolent other nature. Don’t blame it on Dagon’s power in me, either. I know what I am capable of without it.”

Each point bashed at walls that housed my long-buried doubts, hurt, and anger. I hadn’t always taken Tenoch at his word about me. It hadn’t seemed right that everyone else could mold their character based on their actions, while I had to accept that I was born defective. But, as Ian predicted, wondering if Tenoch had been wrong made the ground feel like it disappeared beneath me. Believing Tenoch had been the basis for almost everything I’d done. If I ripped that belief away now, how did I put myself back together? In many ways, it was easier to continue to believe Tenoch than confront the possibility that I’d lived my entire life based on a lie that the sire I adored had told me.

“That’s different,” I said to cover my roiling emotions.

He sighed. “It isn’t. You are one of the finest people I’ve met, to my great exasperation. If you were more selfish, you wouldn’t have stayed away from me after I was first brought back from the dead. You also wouldn’t have spared the little bitch we now have to track down, and you wouldn’t have caged half yourself away to the point that you damn near have a split personality. But you are ridiculously unselfish, which is one of the reasons I so enjoy holding you down to pleasure you before allowing you to touch me,” he added almost offhandedly. “You’re so used to putting yourself last that I truly savor making you come before I’m even inside you.”

This must be what emotional whiplash felt like. One moment, I was frustrated over his flattering but incorrect portrayal of me, and in the next, I was looking at his mouth and thinking of all the ways he had used it on me.

“You’re maddening,” I finally said, too jumbled on the inside to come up with anything more articulate.

He laughed. “Back at you. Leila cursed me right and proper when she bade me to fall in love with someone like you.”

“Good thing Leila isn’t a real witch or that curse might’ve stuck,” I muttered without thinking.

He cocked his head. “Whatever do you mean?”

I hadn’t intended to bring this up. With everything else we’d touched upon, the last thing I needed was to confront Ian with what he didn’t feel for me. “Never mind.”

He came closer, that relentless gaze pinning mine. “Don’t put me off. What do you mean?”

Fuck it, why not? I thought despairingly. I’d have to spend years processing all the points he’d brought up about me. Why not give him something to think about, too?

“I mean you don’t love me.” I squared my shoulders. “It’s fine,” I added. “Things are still very new between us, even if the past couple months feel like years, and . . . why are you laughing?” I demanded, seeing his chest shake with mirth.

“Because you might be spectacular in bed, but no one’s that spectacular,” he got out between infuriating chuckles.

Anger shot through me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His mirth faded as his expression sobered. “You’re serious? But you told me you remembered my last words.”

At that, pain arced through me enough that I looked away. “I do. You, ah, said that you could have loved me.”

“No. I didn’t.”

My gaze snapped back up. “What?”

“You misheard me,” he said, ripping my heart apart. This whole time, I’d clung to the hope that one day, “could have” would turn into “did,” and this whole time, I’d been wrong?

“Not really a surprise,” he went on, heedless to how he was shredding me. “Half my brain was pronged end to end with one bone knife while the other half was partially skewered by a second. Not a recipe for intelligibility, is it?”

I sucked a breath in and held it so I wouldn’t scream. “What did you say, then?” I managed to ask in a calm tone.

He closed the space I’d put between us. “Not ‘could.’ I didn’t chase you all over God’s green earth before branding myself a married man in front of the whole bloody vampire council because I could have loved you. I did it because my actual last words were ‘should have told you I loved you.’”

I froze with such suddenness, it was as if I’d used my abilities to make time stand still. I knew I should say something, but I was too shocked . . . and too afraid that somehow, this wasn’t happening. I’d wanted it too much for it to be real.

His lips curled as he yanked me closer. “Heard me properly this time? Or do you need to hear it again?” His mouth lowered. “Should have told you I loved you,” he said against my lips. “Whether you’re Veritas the Law Guardian, Ariel the vampire-witch, or Death’s scary demigod daughter. Doesn’t matter. In all your forms, in every manifestation of yourself, I love you.”

Then he claimed my mouth with a kiss that made me glad I was sitting down, because otherwise, it would have leveled me. He didn’t stop kissing me for the next several hours, but I managed to speak between them, and it was the same four words.