Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(81)

“Perfect,” I growl, my throat as tight as my chest.

This is never going to work.

I can’t be away from her. I can’t concentrate. My head is full of nothing but her, when it’s supposed to be focused on everything else. I’m leading my men into war, and I hardly care what happens.

Nothing means anything anymore.

Except her.

The woman who’d pay with her life if our two worlds ever collided.

The woman whose sweet love would turn to burning hate if she discovered my duplicity.

The woman I can’t live with, but I also can’t live without.

We’re quiet for a moment, until she says softly, “It’ll be here, waiting for you. Your heart, that is. I’ll take care of it while you’re gone. But you need to do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“You have to take care of mine, because you took it with you when you left.”

After I recover, I murmur, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell me you love me again.”

I hear the smile in her voice when she answers. “I love you, bossy man. You’re my life now. Come back to me soon.”

I have to disconnect without answering.

I can’t.

Because for the first time since I was a boy, I’m fighting back tears.





32





Nat





After that night, three days go by when I don’t hear from him. I want to call, but keep stopping in the middle of dialing.

He’s going to war, I remind myself sternly. The man is busy.

I get a brief text on day four: Dreamt of you last night.

When I text him back asking what the dream was about, he doesn’t answer.

By day six, I’m obsessing nonstop.

He’s dead. He’s been shot. Stabbed. Poisoned. He’s been captured by the police or the FBI. Something has gone horribly wrong, and I’ll never know what, I’ll just be left with no answers and no way of finding out what happened to him.

The feeling is eerily familiar.

Still, I hear nothing.

Still, I wait.

School starts again. Teaching is a welcome relief from the mania that overtakes me when I’m home alone. In the middle of the second week of no contact with Kage, I start painting in a frenzy, producing more work in three days than I have all year.

By the middle of January, I’m going out of my mind.

“Just call him, babe. This is ridiculous.”

I’m in bed, on the phone with Sloane. It’s ten o’clock at night. I know I won’t sleep again, because I haven’t since he left. “It’s too late for me to call. It’s one in the morning in New York.”

“You’re a moron.”

“I don’t want to disturb him. He’s got a lot going on.”

“You’re a huge moron.”

I cry, “Why doesn’t he call me? I told him I loved him, and he got all weird and never called me again!”

She says flatly, “I know you don’t really believe he hasn’t contacted you because you told him you love him.”

My exhalation is a huge, depressed gust of air. “No. I don’t.”

“So what’s the real issue?”

I swallow, staring up at the ceiling, dreading saying it out loud. “Basically…déjà vu.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Oh. Okay, you need to tell him that, right away. I’m sure he has no idea because men are clueless, but you shouldn’t have to relive your past all over again. That’s cruel. Call him right now and tell him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’m hanging up now. Call me back after you talk and he grovels epically.”

She disconnects, leaving me wrestling with my conscience.

He never said I shouldn’t call him when he was away, but I don’t want to be that girl. That clingy, insecure, needy girl.

I don’t have much, but I do have my pride.

Except apparently I don’t, because it only takes ten seconds of internal debate after hanging up with Sloane before I’m calling him.

It rings. Rings again. On the third ring, I sit bolt upright in bed, my heart hammering.

Because I’m hearing the ringing over the line, and also an echo of it coming from somewhere inside my house.

I’m not even on my feet before he crashes through my bedroom door and grabs me.

We fall onto the bed, kissing madly.

He’s as frantic as I am, devouring my mouth and squeezing me everywhere, his hands rough and greedy. I pull his hair and wrap my legs around his waist. He gives me his weight, pinning me to the mattress, groaning into my mouth.

I’m on fire. Euphoric. Intoxicated with relief, lust, and the sheer pleasure of him, his huge, hard body and warm, spicy smell. His taste. The little sounds he makes. His ravenous need for me, the way he so obviously can’t get enough.

I’m wearing a nightshirt. He rips it off.

My lace panties are torn in half and discarded.

He drags me to the edge of the bed, drops to his knees, shoves my legs open, and eats me like a starving man, making desperate noises low in his throat.

Sighing in relief, I sink my hands into his thick hair and rock my hips against his face.

He slaps my thigh. I moan my approval. He pinches the stinging flesh, then slaps it again, harder. The rocking of my hips turns frenzied. Arching my back, I call out his name.