Page 6 of Fury of Affliction

“And my past is?”

“It’s different.”

“Why?”

“You’re you—brilliant, tenacious and strong. Your heart’s aways in the right place.”

“And you’reyou—fierce, protective, so smart, sometimes you’re stupid…with your heart in the right place.”

“Not then.” An admission. A difficult one to make given the fallout…and his son’s death. Guilt rose bright and blinding. Grief and self-loathing lashed him like a long-tailed whip. “I fucked up, Theo.”

“We all do, handsome. Can’t go back, gotta go forward. Part of that is sharing the pain and maybe, finally, being able to forgive yourself,” she said, relaxing him one caress at a time. “Newsflash, Sloan…you’re not perfect. Neither am I. No one is. We all mess up. The thing you need to get is, you’re no longer alone. We’re in this together. Start acting like it.”

“You like busting my balls?”

“Stop stalling.”

“You like busting my balls,” he muttered.

“If doing it gets you where you need to be, then, yeah, absolutely.”

Slipping his hand under the fall of her dark hair, he cupped the nape of her neck. The other dipped beneath the hem of her t-shirt. He palmed her bottom, drew her closer, then stroked up until his palm rested against her lower back.

The Meridian ignited.

Tingles swept over his skin.

With a groan, he nestled in, pressing his mouth to her temple. The connection he shared with her solidified. The electrostatic bands hummed. Magic burned through his veins as the floodgates opened, inundating him with pleasure.

Hands skating over his skin, she murmured his name.

He shivered in response. Goddess, she was glorious. So beautiful in her acceptance, she overwhelmed him every time he touched her.

“I love you, Theo.”

“I know, honey. I love you too.”

Absorbing her steadiness, Sloan drew her scent into his lungs. “Ready?”

“Sock it to me.”

A laugh escaped him. How? No clue.

He didn’t feel like laughing, but somehow her flippant comment lightened the load, coaxing him out of the darkness. Surprising in some ways. Completely expected in others. His mate excelled at settling him in ways he never would’ve thought possible before meeting her.

Step by step, Theodora moved him toward something better, until pitch black shifted to shades of gray, helping him navigate the devastation, making him realize she was right. It was time. His reckoning was long overdue. So instead of shying away, Sloan opened the door to his past, connecting with his mate in the way of his kind. Hiding nothing, he let the memory flow from him into her, sharing the night that had tormented him for over a decade.

Standingin the arms of the man she loved, Theodora shivered with longing. The dread arrived next, pushing calm out, dragging the sense of impending impact in. The doom-scape was real. Alive in the Hub, gathering in Sloan’s energy field, the harbinger that preceded emotional fallout. A detonation as devastating as the nuclear one everyone on earth feared as people continued to hate and countries continued to fight.

So many things about Sloan came easy.

The grief he carried wasn’t one of them.

But she’d asked for it. Begged him to let her all the way in. To trust her to be strong enough to take what he gave when he laid himself bare. His fear of vulnerability broke her heart. Someone had taught him to be that way. She’d been taught the same by her uncle. A man without conscience or honor. A man who relished hurting others almost as much as he liked enjoyed strong whiskey. A man so unlike Sloan, she wondered how her mate had survived inside the hideous distortion of self-imposed isolation for so long.

He kept a lot hidden. So much buried deep. Too much left unsaid, trying to protect himself from the truth.

But that was over now.

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