Page 20 of Crave Me

I watched him finishing off his second burger as he leaned against the headboard of my bed beside me, eating right out of the wrapper after I’d ordered in takeout.

“You haven’t eaten in days, have you?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Seems it slipped my mind.”

Things didn’t simply slip his mind.

I put my plate with just crumbs left from my burger down on the nightstand. “You’re punishing yourself.”

He stopped mid-bite and looked at me from out of the corner of his eye. “Excuse me?”

“You’re punishing yourself, Caspian. For them being taken, for things not going precisely to plan because of this massive curveball that Elijah threw you.”

“Skylar—”

“And most of all, because you think they’re suffering due to who you are. Because they’re connected to you.” I turned to the side, crossing my legs and settling in. “And that’s not true. Okay? It’s absolutely not. You’re too sweet and considerate of them to ever speak it outright—or even to hint at it in any way—but we both know that without you being in their lives, up until the last two years when they were able to grow stronger and find their feet, they wouldn’t have made it. They would have fallen for so many reasons.”

He finished the last two bites of his burger, then put the empty wrapper down on the nightstand closest to his side of the bed.

“Caspian?” I pushed carefully when he still hadn’t responded.

He sighed and shifted to face me. “I appreciate you saying that, but the undisputed fact is that if I hadn’t waged this war against Elijah, our boys would still be here with us now.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I surely do, love. Elijah took them to get at me. And he was able to do so because my guard was down, my resources directed toward the multi-pronged assault that night.”

“We’re talking about the soulless bastard who murdered your parents. He even had Wayne Thorn murdered just in case he happened to take the reins of King in your father’s stead. He’s a narcissistic madman, his only goal being absolute power. He runs his empire like a fucking dictatorship. He has no moral compass to speak of. He’s unhinged, even more so than his demented shit of a little brother—and that’s saying something. He could’ve come at you regardless of whether you’d made the first move. You showed us that video Dante sent you of him discovering Elijah was the one responsible for taking out your parents and Bastian’s father, and it was made clear that Elijah always regretted that you’d been able to save King. Let’s face it, it was only ever a matter of time before he launched an offensive against you. You had to do this, not only for justice, but for protection. Bastian and Caleb know that, they see it the same way I do. I know it, I know them. And so do you, you’re just caught in the storm with all this shit swirling around you and it’s threatening to cloud things for you, to obscure the truth and replace it with guilt and lies that Elijah wants you to believe. He’s trying to break you through them, Caspian. But he can’t. Nobody can.”

I reached out and stroked his hair, the way I knew had the ability to soothe him, something Caleb was known for doing with him.

A pained smile curved his lips.

And then he was leaning into me and brushing those lips over mine.

The moment we connected, the kiss escalated, fueled by some really heavy intensity on his end. He thrust his tongue into my mouth, tangling fiercely with mine, his hands fisting in my hair and holding me in place as he took his fill.

I could barely breathe through it, the overwhelming nature of it.

And then he abruptly stopped.

“I can’t,” he breathed into my hair. “I’m too on edge. I can’t guarantee I won’t lose control.”

I eased back and held his face in my hands, searching his eyes.

There was so much grief, so much agony there. I wanted to soothe it, if only a little, because that could only be achieved wholly once the boys were back with us.

“It’s okay. You’ve let go and unleashed completely on me before.”

“That night in the woods, yes.” He grasped my hands on his face, shaking his head. “That was different. Caleb and Bastian were present, functioning as failsafes just in case. The way I’m feeling now, I can’t… I won’t risk it with you.”

“I love you, Caspian.”

He stroked the backs of my hands. “As I love you.”

He eased them from his face, then kissed my palms. “Get some sleep,” he said, and in the next moment, he was pulling away entirely, then climbing off the bed.

“You need to as well.”

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