Vanish (Firelight #2)(48)

I whimper when he glides a hand beneath my shirt, caressing my back in sweeping strokes. He lifts his lips from mine to say, “Your skin . . . so . . . hot.”

I gasp sharply against our fused mouths as his hand drifts, brushes my ribs, the quivering skin of my stomach.

I tear my lips free and arch my face away from him to release a steaming breath that I can’t hold in any longer.

He drags an icy kiss down my curved throat, his tongue tracing the tendon there . . . only escalating the smolder within me.

His mouth lifts from my neck. Cool air caresses the wet flesh. I gulp the chilly air, desperate to douse the inferno building in me.

I feel his stare. Look up and plunge directly into it.

Even in the room’s gloom, his eyes gleam. He stares down at me with such raw intensity that I lift a trembling hand to trace the shadowed outline of his face, caress the hard-etched lines and masculine angles with my fingertips. I brush the dark eyebrows above those eyes that see right through me.

My fingers drift, relax on his mouth, slightly swollen from kissing. His lips move beneath my touch. “Come with me, Jacinda.” The words rumble through my fingers, up my arm, rooting into my heart. And I go cold.

Because he knows. He knows what’s going on in my head. When I escaped into the bathroom tonight, he heard what I wasn’t saying, the words I didn’t want to speak aloud.

I can’t go with him. I can’t run away and be with him in this perfect fantasy we’ve created in our minds.

“I can’t,” I whisper. Then louder, “I can’t.”

I push his shoulder until he rolls off me. Even in the dim room, I can see the change in his expression. He looks angry, his expression like granite.

“How can you go back there?”

“I can’t not go back. They have to know about Miram . . . and I can’t leave Mom and Tamra wondering what happened to me.”

“We can send a letter,” he growls.

“This isn’t a joke,” I snap.

“Do you see me laughing?” Seizing both my hands, he leans his face close to mine. “Why are you fighting this? Us?”

I shake my head. “I can’t just leave with things like this.”

“You may never get out again. Have you thought about that?” His hands tighten on mine. “What are they going to do to you when you waltz in there and tell them you got yourself caught by hunters? That Miram is lost?”

I shiver. He’s right. It could get ugly. But not totally undeserved on my part. My selfish desires led to this, after all. If I’d listened to Cassian and ended it with Will none of this would ever have happened.

Of course, Miram played her part, too. I’m not above holding her responsible for her involvement. She shouldn’t have been spying on me. That said, she doesn’t deserve the fate awaiting her just because she’s a nosy, spiteful girl.

“I’m going back.”

“Even if it means we’re never together again?”

He knows just what to say. The words that will hurt me the most. The prospect of never seeing him again, hearing his voice, holding him . . .

I wet my lips, swallow, and say words I never thought possible. Words that echo what’s in my head if not my heart. “But we don’t really belong together, Will.”

He pulls back, drops my hands like I’m something he can’t bear to touch anymore. “You don’t mean that.”

I nod a single time, the motion painful, all I can manage. “It’s insanity. What we are . . .” What we aren’t. “You can’t deny—”

He flings himself off the bed in an angry move. “You know the difference between you and me, Jacinda?” he bites out, his voice unfamiliar to me and a little scary.

I scramble into a sitting position, blinking at this angry, unknown Will.

“The difference is that I know who I am.”

I bristle. “I know who I am!”

“No. You know what you are. You haven’t figured out who you are.”

“I’m someone with sense enough to realize I can’t live happily ever after with a hunter—someone with the blood of slaughtered draki running through his veins!” I slap a hand over my mouth the moment this flies from my lips.

He stops, stares down at me with a frightening stillness.

Terrible doesn’t describe how I feel in that moment. I told him his blood didn’t matter to me, and I meant it. He can’t help what he is, so it’s vastly unfair to fling that in his face. Without draki blood, he’d likely be dead, and I certainly don’t wish that had happened. And he’d been just a kid at the time. A sick, dying kid. It wasn’t like he had any choice in his method of treatment. How could I fling that in his face?

“That’s it, isn’t it? What’s really bugging you.”

I shake my head, blink against the sting in my eyes.

He continues, “You think hooking up with some draki prince, with Cassian, makes sense?”

I breathe thinly though my nose. “Maybe,” I whisper, not even sure what I’m saying. Even if Cassian did make sense, he isn’t for me. I’d never betray Tamra that way.

He nods, speaks in such a deadened voice that I feel cold inside. “It would be easy to just accept him. I can understand that.” He motions between us. “Easier than this . . . us.” He steps closer. His legs brush the mattress. His hand lowers to touch my face then, his fingers feather soft on my cheek. I resist leaning into that hand, resist surrendering to the pull he has over me. “Only you’ll never love him. Not like you love me. Right or wrong, that’s the truth. The way it will always be.”