Page 46 of Guarded By the Nightmare

“There were parts I enjoyed.”

“Which ones?”

I couldn’t very well tell herseeing her heart explode.“The part at the end. When you seemed particularly pleasured.”

She tilted her head. “But not you?” she asked, then her eyes went wide. “Sylas—did you not come?”

I had a vague memory of what that was—that once upon a time it’d seemed like my only priority.

But now?

I shook my head. I wouldn’t even know how to accomplish that, seeing as all of me could see, and feel, and taste. If I were to come inside her, would I be leaving a piece of myself behind?

“Were you really scared of getting me pregnant?” she asked, full of innocence.

“Do you think your small human womb could handle my seed?”

“Bold of you to assume I don’t have an IUD.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a little metal gizmo up in there,” she said, gesturing to her belly, before she huffed and shook her head. “But that’s not the point,Sylas—I just wanted you to want things, too. Not that all sex has to be orgasm-centric, but?—”

“Me, not responding appropriately to you, wasn’t normal?” I guessed.

“Something like that. Although I feel very shallow now, for not noticing,” she said, letting her shoulders slump. I took hold of them and straightened her.

“I am not like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew what you wanted from me, of course. But as for me, I do not know—” I thought back to my time inside her. I had enjoyed her pleasure, but in regards to my own... “Anything.”

Her eyes went wide with understanding. “You don’t remember what it was like?”

“What point would there have been in me keeping the memory?” I asked with a shrug.

“Oh, Sylas,” she said once more, only this time with an entirely different intonation.

Pity—for me?

From a human?

“Did you . . . want . . . help with that?” she asked.

And for a moment I could see a series of choices for myself, rather than sheer fate pulling me along a pre-ordained track with her—we would always be reaching the same destination together, of course, but suddenly there were too many paths to get to her death to count, and I found it disconcerting, like standing on the edge of a high building withoutknowing you could fly.

“No,” I said quickly. “I am fine. And—it does not matter. We have a murder to plan, do we not?”

She nodded and dismounted me, giving me one last look. “But promise that you’ll let me know if that changes?”

“As you may let me know if you have need of your throne again,” I said, as regally as I could, before dissipating myself to safety.

34

MINA

“Let me clean up,and then I’ll be back in murder-buddy mode,” I said to a seemingly empty room, retreating to the theoretical sanctity of my bedroom.

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