A Shield of Glass (A Shade of Vampire #49)(54)

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure you were still awake,” he murmured. “I’ve been building the courage to knock, but it seems you beat me to it.”

He gave me a weak smile, his hands behind his back. There was tension between us, heady and hot and filled with unspoken words.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked, breaking the momentary silence.

“You said the conversation wasn’t over,” he replied, a muscle throbbing in his jaw and his eyes fixed so intensely on me that I felt my face on fire.

Ah, so we’ll have to talk about that after all…

I stepped aside, motioning for him to come in. He advanced through the doorway and stopped in the middle of the room, his back to me. I closed the door and leaned against it. We’d been like this before, with him facing away and me unable to speak. I had to break the vicious cycle. I had to be brave and own what I’d said.

Screw it—you might only have tonight. Just say it.

I opened my mouth to talk about my feelings for him, but the words just didn’t want to come out, nearly choking me. My heart was erratic, and I was close to breaking into a cold sweat. His silence made me so nervous, but I couldn’t figure out why.

“Draven, I—”

“Did you mean it?” He cut right to the chase, as if aware of my sudden struggle to initiate this conversation. He looked to his side, but not at me. His voice was low, and there was an intensity emanating from him that I’d never felt before.

“W-What?”

“When you said you loved me. Did you mean it?”

A few seconds passed. I bit my lower lip and decided to go with it.

“Yes.” I laid it out again. I couldn’t hold it in. It just rolled off my tongue with such ease. “I love you.”

I felt better after I said it. Perhaps that had been the source of my anxiousness. My need to tell him I loved him, perhaps again and again until it got seared into his brain and he let go of the foolish idea of sacrificing himself. Maybe I could stop him from going too far, from going that deep into the darkness, if he knew exactly how I felt about him.

It took him a while to move or say something. I waited, quietly, my muscles tense and my stomach twisting, gazing at his back, his broad frame and narrow hips, his bulging arms and long legs.

“The moment you first said it,” he replied slowly. “I felt this surge through my body. I needed to hear you say it again. I wanted to feel that energy again. And I do. Your words give me unexpected strength, Serena.”

He turned to face me, his emotions raw and pouring out of him like a river eager to drown me. His eyes flickered black, and he breathed heavily as he looked at me.

“I will go to the end of the world and back for you, Serena. And hearing, without doubt, that you love me just fuels me even further. I was close to caving in earlier. I’d found a resolve in my death for the greater good, to save Eritopia. But then you said those words, and it all came crumbling down. I can’t allow my life to end before I get to spend it with you.”

I was speechless. My heart pumped hard, inflated beneath my ribs. I found it hard to breathe, my eyes stinging and ready to let out the tears that had been fighting their way to the surface. I’d never been spoken to like this. I’d never experienced anything like this, and the depth of it all was scary and ecstatic at the same time.

“Draven, I love you.”

It was all I could say, in the end. Nothing else seemed to fit better between us.

“I lo—” I wanted to say it again, but he walked over, closing the space between us in the blink of an eye.

His mouth came crashing down on mine, and he took me in his arms, tightening his grip and forcing the air out of my lungs. He kissed me with such intensity that I felt tender, broiling in his embrace. I parted my lips, and he ravished me, consuming my very being as his tongue caressed mine in hungry, circular motions.

He paused to look at me, his lips red and wet, his eyes dark and searing into me.

“I love you, Serena,” he breathed. “I’ve fallen hard, and I can’t pick myself up from it. I can’t even breathe without you anymore. I’m astonished by the depth to which you’ve taken my very soul…”

I cupped his face with my hands, feeling hot tears streaming down my cheeks. It felt incredible to hear him say that. I’d felt it, but hearing the words spoken out loud—it was something else entirely. My heart expanded as I pulled him in for another kiss.

“Say it again,” he whispered, his lips against mine.

“I love you.” My mouth moved over his.

His hands reached my hips, grasping flesh and fabric as his rampant breath escaped between kisses. I ran my fingers through his hair, reveling in the tactile sensation as he pulled me even closer. I felt him hard against me, and a cool draft brushing against my legs as he slowly lifted my nightgown.

I gasped when his fingers found the bare skin on my thighs.

I stilled, and he looked at me, dark and incandescent with desire. I knew where we were going with this, and I knew this time we wouldn’t be able to stop, which suddenly brought my sentry nature slamming into focus.

“Draven, I’m a sentry,” I said, my voice trembling like my entire body under his touch. “I-If we go through with… with… with what it is we’re doing here, remember I told you that you might become a sentry as well… or maybe some weird hybrid mix.”