Lifting my gaze, I could barely speak around my pounding heart. “I wanted to say that these... these seven days have been amazing.”
“Including Herbert?”
I laughed. “Yes, even Herbert.”
Doubt crossed his striking features. “Even though you didn’t get to see DC or hunt a demon?”
“I was telling you the truth. Those things don’t really matter.” I stopped, taking a deep breath. “Maybe they did before, but I don’t know what I was trying to do. Maybe delay the inevitable? Because I—”
“Wait.” He held up a hand, stretching the cotton shirt across his shoulders. “Before you tell me what I know you’re going to tell me, I need to tell you something.”
“But how do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
He laughed dryly. “I know, Jas.”
There was such obvious resignation in his voice that I squared my shoulders. “What do you want to tell me?”
“What I should’ve told you the first night I came back.” He cocked his head back against the door. Several seconds passed. “I should’ve said goodbye, but I didn’t. That was a gigantic mistake—one I can’t fix. And I know I made another by not being honest with you when I returned. I just didn’t want you to know the truth.”
Those words were forbidding. “The truth about why you left?”
He nodded.
A shiver coursed over my shoulders. “Well, if you didn’t want me to know, I’m pretty sure I can figure it out. I mean, you were eighteen, so I assume you were out doing your thing.”
Dez lowered his chin and pushed off the door. “My thing?”
There was a note of warning in his voice. Sometimes I needed to just shut up. This was one of those moments. Of course, my mouth kept moving. “Yeah, you know. Hooking up. Sowing your wild oats. Getting laid. Whatever.”
“Are you serious?”
I shrugged.
“There hasn’t been a single female I’ve thought about, let alone wanted to hook up with,” he said. “What I did when I left didn’t involve anything like that, Jasmine.”
I thought about the night in the hotel and my body flushed. He had to have experience, lots of experience.
“I wasn’t with anyone during that time,” he added.
I snorted. “Yeah, I’m not stupid, Dez.”
Anger flashed across his face as he stormed forward. “There’re a lot of things you could say about me, but I have never lied to you. I’m not lying to you now. I stayed true to you! This whole time! There has been no one else!”
I opened my mouth to argue, but his words sank in through the anger and confusion. My heart was like a balloon straining to float away. “Wh-what?”
Dez stared at me, his eyes now shining a brilliant blue. Two pink circles appeared on his cheeks and then he looked away, shoving a hand through his hair. “I haven’t been with anyone, Jasmine. Not like that.”
“Why?” I blurted out the question before I could stop myself, and the look he gave me said he wondered what was wrong with me. But I couldn’t comprehend that he had been with no one—no other female of our kind or human. It wasn’t as if he’d been hurting for attention. Females would cut off their left legs to be with him.
He blew out a deep breath as he dropped his hand. “I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t?” I stepped closer.
“No. It wouldn’t have been right.”
I stopped, holding my hands pressed tightly against my chest as if I could stop my heart from jumping out of it. “Because mating with me was a duty, or—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” He prowled forward, stopping just in front of me. Air halted in my lungs as he dipped his head, his mouth inches from mine. “What is between us has nothing to do with duty or an obligation to mate and procreate. It’s only about us.”