Wicked (A Wicked Saga, #1)(81)

I sat on the couch, folding my hands together in my lap.

He shook his head at me. "There's something I actually want to show you—give you. Be right back."

Give me? What could he possibly want to give me? A kiss? I doubted he had to go into his bedroom to get that. And did I want a kiss? I had no problem with those kisses yesterday. God, I didn't know what I wanted.

Or I wasn't ready to acknowledge it.

Either way, Ren returned and sat on the couch beside me, a slender ashy colored wooden stake in his hand. "It's a thorn stake. It'll kill ancients." He placed it in my hand, wrapping my fingers over the smooth, thicker end. His eyes met mine. "I wanted you to have this. I meant to give it to you yesterday, but we kind of got distracted."

Oh, we'd gotten way distracted. "I can't say a guy has ever given me a weapon of stabby awesome before."

That mouth curved up on one side. "Obviously you've never met a guy like me before."

That was so true, in a lot of ways. The stake felt light, but it was sturdy. He slowly slid his fingers off mine, leaving behind a wake of shivers. "Are you sure you want to give this to me?"

"It's my extra. I'm not using it, and I want you to have it on you, especially going forward." He leaned over, grabbing his beer, then settled back against the couch beside me. His thigh rested against mine; the nearness was comfortable to him, and I imagined if I stopped thinking about it, it would be to me too. "You have to hit them in the chest. As if they were vampires."

I turned the stake over, respecting the craftsmanship it took to whittle this baby into such a sharp, destructive end. "Thank you."

He nodded and tipped the bottle to his lips.

"I mean it." Gingerly placing the stake on the coffee table, I grabbed my soda and sat back. Around midnight we received a mass text from David advising us of an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon. We knew it was about the gate. "How do you think the other Order members will respond to what David's going to talk about?"'

"I don't know." He grabbed the remote off the cushion next to him and flipped on the TV. "Let's not talk about any of that, okay? I know that's probably not the smartest decision, but babe, there isn't anything we can do at this point that's going to change things."

I hesitated as I studied his profile. "But what about the other halfling? If that gate opens, it becomes even more imperative that we find out who that is."

"We?" He grinned as he took a drink. "I like that. We. Sounds good."

My cheeks heated as I glanced at the TV. He'd turned it on to some movie channel.

"We know there's at least one more member that fits the bill, but I haven't been given the details just yet. They won't say the name until they have something on them," he said, and for some reason, unease blossomed in my stomach.

I didn't have any reason to think he wasn't telling me everything. He'd been pretty upfront. "I'm sorry for not warning you ahead of time about talking to David and putting you in the position of having to tell him about the Elite."

"It's okay."

I shook my head and avoided his gaze. "Actually, it's not. Val . . . she already knew because I told her the weekend after you told me. I had to talk to someone so I could wrap my head around it. I know that doesn't justify doing it, but I wanted to be upfront."

When I dared a quick look at him, he didn't look too pissed. His expression was virtually blank. "Did you tell her why I was here?"

"To hunt the halfling? No. You heard her. She didn't know about the halflings until now."

A moment passed and then he nodded. "Have you've told anyone else?"

I shook my head.

He seemed to mull that over. "Well, honestly, it doesn't really matter now. Even if you didn't tell her, she would've heard about it when she was in that room."

No real measure of relief was felt even though he handled it a lot better than I probably would have. "I should've called you this morning and gave you a heads up or something."

"Hey," he said, curving his free hand around my chin, turning my gaze to his. "A heads up would've been nice, and I would've preferred for that conversation to go down when there wasn't anyone else in the room, but it's over and done with. David knew about the Elite, so it wasn't like I was dropping some big bomb or breaking the rules."

"You already broke the rules with me."

"I did." He dragged his thumb along my lower lip, and if I were a braver girl, I would've caught that wicked finger with my mouth. "For tonight, let's just . . . be normal."

I pulled back, eyes wide. "What?"

"Normal. Like those people we saw at the diner the night you almost slit my throat with your stake," he explained, and I remembered the girls and guys we'd seen in there. "Let's just not talk about any of that shit. Okay?"

I bit down on my lip and nodded as I returned my attention to the screen. A knot formed at the back of my throat, and I downed half my soda to get rid of it. He had no idea how wanting the same thing I did, even in the littlest way, affected me.

As he ended up settling on a Vince Vaughn movie, I relaxed, one muscle at a time, sinking into the couch beside him, his shoulder pressed against mine. We laughed at the same jokes, shook our heads at the same scenes, and it didn't take long for me to realize just how badly I needed this—both of us did.