Page 101 of An Empress of Earth & Darkness

For both of them.

He dropped her hand, and it was like he had been holding her heart. His dark lashes swept up. “You will heal quickly anyway. You Shifters always do.”

He had almost turned away from her when her hand shot out and grabbed his thick wrist. He twisted back around to see her, his huge frame drowning out anything else in her vision.

“I am sorry for how I treated you on the beach.” She glanced up at him and immediately noted the surprise on his face. She took a deep breath. “I told you to stay away from me and I shouldn’t have. That is not what I want,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have been so horrible to you. You didn’t deserve it.”

If he had wanted to keep his emotions a secret, then he had failed, because his face sold him down the River of Vanadey. His eyes widened and his lips parted. Shock lifted his brows.

She hesitated as his silence lasted longer than she hoped. “I was in a foul mood and I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.” She looked him over. “I have…I have a lot going on in my head and at home, and I just snapped.” She shook her head and looked at the ground. “I don’t want you to not speak to me.” She curled her toes as his gaze saw right through her soul. “I don’t want you to stay away from me. It wouldn’t feel natural.”

She didn’t know why she was putting this out into the open when moments ago her heart had decided that this couldn’t be anything. Why was her heart betraying her head already?

Finally, he looked down at her hand on his arm and then he met her glare. “All I wanted was for you to speak to me and tell me what was going on. I wanted to help.”

Artem was short in his delivery, and she had never heard him take that tone with anyone.

Shame engulfed her. “I know. I know. I am a mess.” She offered him a broken smile. “I am a total fucking mess and I don’t know how to be so…together like all of you.”

“You think I have my life together?” A dry laugh left his chest. “You think hunters have any say in how their lives go?”

There was so much she wanted to say, and it looked like he did too, but if she did, she knew she would just dig herself a deeper hole.

“I don’t want to stay away from you either,” he finally made an admission of his own, and Breighly’s heart kicked against her chest. “I can’t explain what I feel. I just know that when you are in the room, I can’t stop myself from finding you.”

His words were like a battering ram that forced open the closed doors to her heart.

Fuck. Why was that the truth? Why did she feel the same?

The truth of her heart was not to be explored.

“We can’t do this, Artem,” she whispered, knowing full well that because she had denied herself something, she wanted it all the more. “We are not supposed to. You are a hunter and I am a wolf.”

He moved further into the thick air between them and his hand wove its way in behind her ear. She fought off a shiver, her body bending to him too easily. She hated that she was so quick to welcome his touch.

“I know,” he said, his brow pinching together. “But I can’t stop thinking about you, and that is the truth. So fuck our stupid traditions. It’s like we are drawn together, different factions or not. What does it matter?”

Her hand found his strong chest and she swallowed at how good it felt below her. “It’s the moon. It makes us do crazy shit. It’s not real.”

It wouldn’t matter when the sun came up, she told herself.

His face brightened as a chuckle escaped. “I have never met a girl who blames everything on the moon quite like you do.”

She bit back a smile. “It’s the truth. This is her kingdom and we are all just her puppets. And when she goes to sleep during the day, we have to live with the consequences of that. It’s selfish, really.”

He smiled at her words like he didn’t quite believe them, but instead of challenging her, he said, “I don’t believe that anyone or anything in this world could tell you what to do, Breighly Baxgroll. And that includes the powers of the moon.” His voice was so low and charming that it reached out for her like a lure and pulled her in.

She was sinking, and fast.

“I think that’s the most intelligent thing I have ever heard you say, Hunter.” She flashed him a daring smile, and she could see how much it affected him. She wasn’t sinking alone; she heard his breathing hitch as he rubbed a thumb over her cheek.

He lowered his chin, and she could feel his warmth rush towards her. “There are a few more things I would rather be saying now, Breighly. But I don’t want to confuse anything. You have made yourself very clear.”

The way he said her name sent stars shooting through her veins and fire up her spine. How was he still getting under her skin? She had shut this down in more ways than one and more times than she could count. How was she so quick to find herself in murky waters again?

“Especially when I see you standing there with my tunic on and the Wolf Moon’s beams glittering through your hair. I know you didn’t mean what you said to me on Tolsah Beach, but somehow, it still struck me like an arrow in my gut.”

Fuck.

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