Page 19 of Love's Ace

I didn’t have to open my eyes to feel the way he was glaring like he didn’t believe me.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, fine. Get me out of here before I see those people again.”

Wren hesitated above me for another second before standing. I didn’t stop him when he wrapped his fingers around my wrists, and I kept my eyes on the ground the entire way out the front door.

Chapter 7

Wren

He was a monster.There was no other way to look at it. Theo was amonster—a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and tear the entire world around him apart. I’d seen it in his eyes when he noticed the two people behind us—they weren’t my charges, but the connection was there. Strong and pure, and apparently a siren’s call to the fury in his chest.

I had to figure out how to break the thread between us. I had to figure out how to free myself before that darkness I’d felt surge forward and try to eat him from the inside out spilled up and devoured me too.

And I had to stop touching him.

Somehow, the last part seemed to be the hardest task. I kept my fingers on the back of his neck as I led him to the motel room, and he kept his eyes on the ground the whole way. I’d seen something on his face before he’d freaked out in the diner.

The way he’d asked me to stop touching him, the soft, desperatepleasethat made his voice tremble in fear. It spoke of a past I couldn’t imagine, a life of pain that had turned him into the man I saw in front of me.

It was rare that a human was born to become an Enmity. Most had something pure about them at birth. Most people were sculpted into monsters by the world around them, by the circumstances that broke them one little piece at a time. Until that point, I’d been all but certain that Theo was the former.

Looking at the way his dark eyes seemed like a thousand fractured pieces, broken shards that cut both inward and out, I’d let my guard down and considered that maybe I was wrong.

Letting my guard down had given him the chance to pull away. It let him go after those people—it gave him the opportunity tostabme, when I usually wasn’t injured in combat, let alone from a random man who didn’t even have claws.

I let him go as soon as we entered the motel room, like the touch of my hand on the back of his neck was burning me—in a way, it was. I could feel the heat of him scalding up along my arm,infectingme withemotionandfeeling. If some part of me had thought the Ardor would eventually fade and I’d be able to control the surge of sensation pouring through my body, I was beginning to lose that hope.

That heat streaked along my nerve endings and made me feel tense, made my body feelalive.If anything, it was just getting worse with each beat of my heart sending it pulsing through my veins.

I didn’t like it. I didn’twantit. I didn’t take the Ardor because I didn’tliketouching people—touching made youfeel. Touching gave you connection, even if it was usually just a temporary thing.

This felt different from the time I’d tried it before.

This felt like so muchmore, and I knew it was because of the damn red thread trailing between us.

Theo sprang from me like I’d been the one to stab him as soon as I let him go, stalking across the room and flattening his back to the bathroom door like I was threatening him. He looked atme from beneath his hair, his mouth set in a grim line. “Did you change your mind? Are you going to kill me now?”

Fuck, I thought about it. I thought about running my blade through him and taking my chances with the consequences. My hand came up, and I gave the red string between us an experimental jerk. The low groan that tore from my chest nearly betrayed the way my knees wanted to give out.

While I swayed, Theo straightened up. My eyes narrowed—did it give himstrengthwhen I pulled on the damn thread? If I cut the line between us, was I going to make some kind of super-powered monster? Would it feed him my aura?

Every tug made me feel like I was going to die… and maybe I wasn’t quite as ready for that as I thought, because my hands dropped to my side and I scowled.

“I’m not the one who stabbed someone, am I?”

The venom in my words seemed to give him strength. He started toward me, and I swiped my hand through the golden trail of my blood, holding it up between us while my other fingers grabbed my blade. “It might kill me to run this through you, Theo, but I’ll still do it. Iwon’tdie alone.”

He stopped, staring at me—not at me, at the blood on my hand and the wound where it came from. The scowl on his pretty face twitched, and his eyes trailed to my knife.

“You would, wouldn’t you? You’d run that through me without a second thought. Because of what you think I might become.”

“Without hesitation,” I confirmed, though I knew the words were a lie. He didn’t, though. If nothing else, I could keep that much of a wall between us. He didn’t need to know that, for a moment, when we’d been in the diner together and I’d seen that broken expression on his face, I’d thought that maybe I could…

What? Help him?

That I didn’t want to kill him?

---