Kat turned around. Red-rimmed eyes met mine.
“I knew you’d be here.” I cast my gaze to the frozen lake, my jaw working. “It’s where I come when I need to think.”
She drew in a shallow breath. “How’s Dee?”
“She’ll survive,” I said, even though I wished she wouldn’t have to survive this. “We need to talk. Are you busy right now? Not sure if I’m interrupting. Staring at the lake can take a lot of concentration.”
Her brows knit. “I’m not busy.”
I met her stare. “Then come back with me?”
Anxious energy rolled off her, but she nodded. We walked back to my house in silence. I led her into the kitchen. “Hungry? I haven’t eaten all day.”
She watched me cautiously. “Yeah, a little.”
I went to the fridge and grabbed some lunch meat while Kat sat at the table. I made two ham and cheese sandwiches, doubling up on the mayonaise for hers. We ate and cleaned up in silence.
Kat stood. “Daemon, I—”
“Not yet.” I dried my hands and then walked out of the kitchen, knowing Kat was behind me. I started up the steps.
“Why are we going upstairs?”
I glanced over my shoulder, my hand on the mahogany-colored rail. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just seems…”
It might be weird, but I didn’t know if Dee was going to return tonight, and I didn’t want her walking in on what Kat and I needed to talk about. We could’ve gone to her house, but that was the last place I wanted to be right now.
“Where’s Dee?” she asked as we walked past her bedroom.
“She’s with Ash and Andrew. I think being with them is helping her…” I opened the door and stepped aside, letting her walk in.
Her nervous energy increased, along with her heart rate. “Your room?”
I closed the door. “Yep. The best spot in the whole house.”
Kat folded her hands together as she checked out my room. She’d never been in here before, so she was taking everything in—the posters, the TV and desk. The bed. I waved my hand, turning the bedside lamp on.
She turned to the desk, staring at my Mac. “Nice computer.”
“It is.” I kicked off my boots.
“Daemon—” She stopped when I sat on the bed. Her fingers drifted over the lid of the Mac. “I am so sorry about everything. I shouldn’t have trusted him—I should’ve listened to you. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Adam didn’t get hurt. He died, Kat.”
She faced me, her voice thick. “I… If I could go back, I’d change everything.”
I shook my head as my gaze dropped to my open hands. I curled them into fists. “I know we don’t always get along, and I know the whole connection thing freaked you out, but you knew you could always trust me. The moment you suspected Blake was with the DOD, you should’ve come to me.” Helplessness filled me. “I could’ve prevented this.”
“I do trust you. With my life,” she said, inching closer. “But once I thought he could possibly be involved with them, I didn’t want you involved. Blake knew and suspected too much already.”
“I should’ve done more. When he threw that damn knife at you, I should’ve stepped in then and not backed down, but I was just so damn angry.”
Her chest rose sharply, and papers on my desk stirred. “I was trying to protect you.”
I lifted my gaze. I knew she wanted that, but could that have been the sole reason behind her not coming to me about Blake? She was trying to protect me. “You wanted to keep me safe?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Not that it turned out that way in the end, but when I found out Blake and Vaughn were related, all I could think was that he played me—I let myself be played. And he knew how close we were. They’d do to you what they did to Dawson. There is no way I could have lived with that.”
Closing my eyes, I turned my head. “When did you know definitely that Blake was working with the DOD?”
“On New Year’s Eve. Blake showed up while I was sleeping, and I saw Simon’s watch in his car. He says Simon’s still alive, that the DOD took him, but there…there was blood on his watch.”
I cursed. “While you were sleeping? Did he do this often?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Not that she knew of. Shit. I should’ve killed him…for a multitude of reasons.
“You should’ve never been worried about me getting hurt.” I stood, running both hands through my hair. “You know I can take care of myself. You know I can handle my own.”
“I know, but I wasn’t going to knowingly put you at risk. You mean too much to me.”
My head swung toward her. That was probably the first time I’d ever heard her actually say that. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“I…” Her lower lip trembled. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“The hell it doesn’t!” I yelled. “You nearly destroyed my family, Kat. You almost got both of us killed, and none of this is over. Who knows how much time any of us have before the DOD comes? I let that dickhead go. He’s still out there, and as terrible as this sounds, I hope he gets what’s coming to him before he can report back to anyone. Fuck! You lied to me! Are you telling me all of this is because I mean something to you?”
Pink swept across her cheeks. “Daemon…”
“Answer me!”
“Fine!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, you mean something to me. What you did for me on Thanksgiving—that made me…” Her voice cracked. “That made me happy. You made me happy. And I still care about you. Okay? You mean something to me—something I can’t really even put into words because everything seems too lame in comparison. I’ve always wanted you, even when I hated you. I want you even though you drive me freaking insane. And I know I screwed everything up. Not just for you and me, but for Dee.”
I stared at her.
Her next breath caught on a sob as tears filled her eyes. “And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I’m falling every time I’m around you, like I can’t catch my breath, and I feel alive—not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There’s been nothing like that with anyone else.”
The entire world was crashing down on us. That son of a bitch Blake—I should’ve killed him the moment I first saw him. I should’ve killed him now. Kat had lied to me. Adam was dead. Dee was destroyed. The DOD would be knocking on our doors any damn second, I still had no idea where Dawson was, and the only thing I could think about—cared about—was what Kat was telling me. That she had never felt this way about anyone before. That she couldn’t catch her breath and that she felt alive.
And she was talking about how she felt about me.
“But none of this matters,” she continued, “because I know you really hate me now. I understand that. I just wish I could go back and change everything! I—”
I moved too fast for her to track and clasped her cheeks. “I never hated you.”
She blinked, and God, I couldn’t stand it if she cried. “But—”
“I don’t hate you now, Kat.” My gaze locked with her watery one. “I’m mad at you—at myself. I’m so angry, I can taste it. I want to find Blake and rearrange parts of his body. But do you know what I thought about all day yesterday? All night? The one single thought I couldn’t escape, no matter how pissed off I am at you?”
“No,” she whispered.
My chest constricted. “That I’m lucky, because the person I can’t get out of my head, the person who means more to me than I can stand, is still alive. She’s still there. And that’s you.”
A tear trailed down her cheek. “What…what does that mean?”
“I really don’t know.” I chased after the tear with my thumb. “I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring, what a year from now is going to be like. Hell, we may end up killing each other over something stupid next week. It’s a possibility. But all I do know is what I feel for you isn’t go
ing anywhere.”
She started to cry harder, and it made me weak in the knees. I bent my head, kissing the tears away until that wasn’t enough and I needed a taste of her. I kissed her, growling at the way her lips felt against mine.
But Kat pulled back. “How can you still want me?”
I pressed my forehead against hers. “Oh, I still want to strangle you. But I’m insane. You’re crazy. Maybe that’s why. We just make crazy together.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It kind of does, to me at least.” I kissed her again. I had to. “It might have to do with the fact that you finally admitted you’re deeply and irrevocably in love with me.”
She let out a weak, shaky laugh. “I so did not admit that.”
“Not in so many words, but we both know it’s true. And I’m okay with it.”
“You are?” She closed those beautiful heather-gray eyes, and all I could think was how grateful I was she was still breathing.
Man, I was turning into a pansy.
But I didn’t care. Not when it came to her.
“It’s the same for you?” she asked.
My answer was to bring our mouths together again…and again. The touch was like tapping into the Source, sending lightning straight to the soul. The kiss deepened until there was no me, no her. It was just us, and it wasn’t enough—could never be enough.
I was moving without realizing it, and the next thing I knew we were on the bed and she was right where I wanted her—in my lap. And then she was beside me on the bed, and my heart was doing crazy crap in my chest. Such a human thing, but it was happening.
Kat breathed heavily. “This doesn’t change anything I’ve done. All of this is still my fault.”
Placing my hand on her stomach, I moved so close I was practically attached to her. And I wanted to be in so many different ways. “It’s not all your fault. It’s all of ours. And we’re in this together. We’ll face whatever is waiting for us together.”
“Us?”
I nodded, working on the buttons of her sweater. Some of them were buttoned incorrectly, and I laughed. Only Kat could have trouble putting clothes on correctly and somehow make it sexy. “If there is anything, there is us.”
Kat lifted her shoulders and helped me get her out of the damn thing. Good. She was on board with where this was heading. “And what does ‘us’ really mean?”
“You and me.” I moved down, tugging off her boots. “No one else.”
Her cheeks flushed as she pulled off her socks and lay back down. Jesus, she still had on way too many clothes. “I…I kind of like the sound of that.”
“Kind of?” Bull. Shit. I slipped my hand down her stomach, to the hem of her shirt and underneath. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. The minor burn of pain did nothing. I loved the way her skin felt like satin. “Kind of isn’t good enough.”
“Okay. I do like that.”
“So do I.” I lowered my head, kissing her slowly. “I bet you love that.”
Her lips curved into a smile against mine. “I do.”
There was that damn constriction again, like I’d been punched in the chest, but in a good way. How you could be punched in the chest in a good way was beyond me, but damn, I sort of loved that feeling.
“Tell me everything,” I asked in the tiny space between our mouths.
The tips of her fingers slipped over my cheek, and she seemed to know what I’d meant without having to say the exact words. “I didn’t burn my fingers on the stove. Blake…he was teaching me how to control fire—how to create it.”
Jesus. “The bruises?”
“From him during training,” she whispered as her lashes lowered. “I didn’t think he was doing it on purpose. Not until our last training session before Christmas. I’d been too tired to train, so he suggested we grab something to eat. It didn’t feel right from the beginning, because we went out of the range of the beta quartz.”
I might’ve stopped breathing.
“Dinner was strained, and then he got a text message. Looking back now, I wonder how much of this was set up.” She laughed without any humor. “On the way home, I felt an Arum. He pulled along the side of the road, made me get out…and fight it.”
“What?” I seethed.
She didn’t look up. “I had to fight the Arum, and I did. I killed…I killed it,” she continued, her voice low. “It wasn’t easy.”
It took several moments before I trusted myself to speak. “That’s how you were covered with all those bruises along your back?”
“Yeah. I didn’t tell you the truth, because I knew…I knew you’d go after him, and I wasn’t worried for him. I was worried for you, because at that point I knew something was wrong with him. I knew something was off, just like you’d been saying the whole time.” Kat shuddered, and I pressed my lips to her forehead. “That’s when I began to really suspect he wasn’t what he seemed to be. I didn’t want you to go after him in case he was working with the DOD or something.” Her voice shook. “I should’ve listened to you, Daemon. I should’ve—”
“Shh,” I said, kissing her still-damp cheeks, and then I found her lips. I kissed her softly, changing the reason she trembled in my arms. “I was jealous,” I admitted.
“What?” Her lips brushed mine.
I slipped my thigh between hers. “I was…jealous of how much time you were spending with him. I wasn’t thinking clearly when he first came into the picture. I thought I was going to lose you before…before I had you.”
“No,” she whispered, cupping my cheek. Her hand shook. “It was never like that with him. Maybe…maybe in the beginning I wanted it to be, because I was so confused about how I felt about you, but when he kissed me, I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. It wasn’t anything like when you kiss me.” Her hand slipped into my hair. “We only kissed that one time. He tried…he tried once more, but I stopped him.”
Tension poured into my muscles. “And did he stop?”
“Yes. I swear. He stopped.”
The relief was sweet, and I brought our mouths together once more. In between the kisses that unraveled me and then pieced me back together, I spoke things I never told anyone. How crazy I had felt after hearing Dawson was dead, and the hope I felt learning he had to be alive. I told her how badly I wished my parents were here and how sometimes I hated being the one who had to take care of things.
Everything I felt was in every touch, and even what I didn’t say was in the way my fingers brushed over the fragile bones of her rib cage. And with every breathy, soft moan that escaped her lips, I was snared in her web a little more.
My hands shook as they moved up, and I hoped she didn’t notice. I was blown away, shattered by what she allowed me to do. Pieces of our clothing disappeared. My shirt. Hers. Kat’s hand drifted down my stomach, and I clenched my jaw so hard I was sure I was going to be paying a visit to a dentist soon.
When her fingers found the button on my jeans, I was completely lost to her, but in a way I never, ever expected.
“You have no idea how badly I want this,” I told her, bringing the tips of my fingers down her chest and over her stomach. So beautiful. “I think I’ve actually dreamed about it. Crazy, huh?”
She ran the pads of her fingers down my cheek. I turned into the touch, pressing a kiss against the palm of her hand, and then I found her mouth again. This kiss was different, more intense, and Kat—aw, God—Kat came alive. Hips rocking together, our bodies fitted so tightly there was a good chance I would slip into my true form and knock out the power in the entire state.
Our explorations grew. Her hands were everywhere, and I urged her with words and touches to go further. Her leg curled around my hips—sweet baby Jesus—I was nearly undone.
With my name on her lips and with barely anything separating us, I felt the last of my control slipping. Whitish-red light radiated off me, bathing Kat in the warm glow. There was nowhere that my hands didn’t explore, and the way her body arched into the slightest touch,
I was awed and consumed. Kissing her and drawing her deep inside me, I never wanted this to end. She was perfect to me. She was mine, and I wanted her more than I wanted anything in my life.
But I stopped.
Everything that had happened flipped through my head like a photo album I wanted to burn. Both our emotions were all over the place. There had been death, discovery, and so much more. And we were rushing headfirst into not turning back.
I didn’t want our first time to be like this—to be because of what happened.
My God, I was a mushy pansy-ass, but I stopped.
Kat stared up at me, running her hands over my stomach and making it really hard to slam on the brakes. “What?” she asked.
“You…you’re not going to believe me.” Hell, I didn’t believe