Page 28 of Love's Ace

“Does it help when I touch you?” I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I had to hear it from him.

There was another moment of silence, and then I heard his fist slam against the wall behind me. It sent a lance of pain up my arm, but I stayed still and waited. Until finally…

“No.” Theo took a shaking breath almost instantly, like he could snatch the word back from the air. “Yes?” There was another thud against the wall, and the sound of a body dropping to the floor. Like I was drawn on strings, I followed. My shoulders pressed back until I could slide down to a sitting position. I turned, palms flattening against the cheap wallpaper, my forehead pressed against the coolness like it would allow me to see him, to know if he was telling the truth. “I don’t know… Fuck. I don’t like being touched.”

The way he said it was so simple, but there were worlds beneath the tone. There was a story that he obviously wasn’t ready to tell me, and I wasn’t willing to ask for. I wasn’t sure if I could stand to hear it—not on top of these emotions. Not when I couldn’t understand what I was feeling.

I was born to be what I was. Most Enmity were made through circumstance and shit the world threw at them. It wasn’t a choice, or something they’d done. It wasn’t their fault… not really.

What had the world thrown at Theo to make him feel so broken inside?

“I…” I trailed my fingers along the wallpaper like it would somehow give me the answers, and I heard him shifting on the other side like he was following the line I traced. “If it helps, I don’t like touching people either.” My lips quirked into a rueful smile. “Up until I met you, I avoided it altogether. My kind cansense emotions when we touch others and…” Why was I telling him anything about me? I was sworn to kill him—we didn’t divulge our secrets to our enemies. And yet… “I can’tfeelthose emotions. It made me angry, I think… because it was there, on the edge of my senses, but I couldn’t understand it.”

“Why not?”

“Cupids can’tfeelstrong emotions like love and lust. When we’re made, they take that from us.”

“Until now.”

His voice was so soft it was nearly a whisper, and I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or if it was pity. Either way, it was a truth I couldn’t ignore.

“Until now,” I echoed. When I dropped my forehead against the wall again, I heard another rustle from him, a thump on the other side that sent vibrations along my skin. He was mirroring me—touching without really touching. “So… if it helps keep your rage under control, can you tell me how to do it without… upsetting you?”

I was shocked how much a small part of me wanted to askwhy. I wanted to understand who’d hurt him, how they’d hurt him. It was easy enough to blame it on professional curiosity. We’d seen Enmity in the making. We’d killed them. We’d taken half-changed humans and questioned them before putting them out of their misery… but this was…

Different.

I’d never been this close to someone who was so on the edge of change and been able to have a conversation. I could completely blame this on wanting to understand the makings of the monsters I’d killed more times than I could count—the things I’d had my life stolen away for.

It definitely wasn’t because I gave a shit about what had happened to Theo.

“I… don’t… trust people to touch me. Any time they have before, it’s not been… kind.” His voice cracked, and I could hear the way his breath was a little more ragged than it had been. Each word was punctuated with a punched-out little sound, breathy and pain-filled, so raw it ached behind my ribs. “I don’t know how to let you touch me without wondering what part of me you want to break. I’m the only person I can trust to take care of me, and even that’s debatable sometimes.”

That wasn’t true. I had no idea what he’d been through before, or who’d hurt him. He’dtoldme he’d killed people, and I believed him… but he was still broken along every line in his chest, and it wasn’t fuckingtrue.

Things were different now. I couldfeelwhen he was hurting, and I didn’t want to feel that at all.

I wouldn’t let it happen again.

And I didn’t know what I was doing now, here… but I knew that I had to dosomething.

I shifted slightly until I could reach around the doorframe. I couldn’t see him, but I laid my hand on the floor, palm up, with my forehead still pressed to the wall.

“Then touch me instead. If it helps. I won’t move. I won’thurtyou, Theo.” It took more effort than I thought to get the words from my chest—how long had I spent avoiding exactly this? Not just with an enemy, but with anyone? How long had I made sure I never had to touch anyone, to feel the edges of those emotions that would never be mine? And now I was throwing it all away because Theo was crying and I could almost taste the salt of his tears on my tongue.

For a breath, I thought he wasn’t going to take me up on the offer. I stared at my upturned palm on the floor, stretched out in the space between us like it was a damn traitor. What was I doing?

Then I felt it. The barest hint of his fingertips trailing along my skin, tracing the lines like he was searching for a roadmap that would give us both answers to whatever this was, to whatever was happening between us.

Ifelthim settle into the sensation. All I could see were his long, elegant digits… but I knew his forehead was pressed to the wall opposite me. When he let out a trembling breath and slid his fingers into mine, my body twitched… and before I could stop them, my wings sprang from my back in a rustle of feathers that left me breathless. My instant reaction was to jerk away, to move, so I wasn’t close to danger while in such a vulnerable position, kneeling on the ground and being held by an Enmity.

Like he could sense it, Theo’s fingers held tighter to mine.

It didn’t make sense, but I stopped trying to pull back. I wasn’t sure that I could have, honestly. We were tethered together, heart to heart, palm to palm. Pain to pain.

At my back, my wings rustled and then settled against my skin, leaving one dark feather to fall between us and land on the back of Theo’s hand.

He didn’t move it away.

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