Page 220 of Caelum

As I connected with my soul, I realized why I was still on edge.

I wasn’t Chosen yet.

What the fuck?

Before I could sputter out my agony, her clothes landed in wet heaps on the shower floor. The soggy splats broke into my spiraling thoughts, and I gaped at her naked body for timeless moments. She was rounder than I usually appreciated in a woman, curvier, and yet, despite being unlike any other woman I’d slept with, that just felt all the more perfect.

I needed Eve. So fucking badly I was starting to hurt.

She grabbed some soap from a silver frame that hung suspended from the ceiling. Watching her clean herself was agonizingly delicious. It was such a private act that had I not known her Hell Hound was in charge today, I knew she’d be blushing. But that beast had no shame. Especially not with someone they believed belonged to them. And from the fire in her eyes? There was no question in my mind that she believed I was hers, so why the fuck wasn’t I Chosen?

When she’d cleaned up, not leaving a single stone unturned—and having never watched a woman in the shower—I was surprised at the inherent grace in watching her soap up her body, and in seeing the suds sliding down her curves. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth from the sheer sensuality of it.

When the soap had rinsed away, she held out her hand and whispered, “I’m clean for you now.”

Okay, so she’d been asleep for five days and hadn’t showered in that length of time. I could see why she might think that was the reason for my pulling back, but it wasn’t.

I shook my head. “You’re too weak from the sleep. If I take from you, I could hurt you.”

“I can’t Choose you if you don’t feed from me.”

Her bland words had me frowning at her. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”

She licked her lips and her hand moved to trace the leaves on the other wrist. I felt entranced by the gentle movement of the digits, enticed as though she were touching me instead of herself. Christ, the moves were perfectly innocent, but they made me hard as nails.

“I just know.” Her fingers carried on tracing upward, higher andhigher until she reached her chest. My heart almost stopped when I figured she was going to touch her tits, but she didn’t. She moved her hand to the center of her sternum, right where, a few days before, her torso had glowed with the form of a tree, and right where her fingers twirled around and around was where the tree had branched off, splitting in two before heading down each arm.

There was something she wasn’t telling me. Either because she didn’t know the answer herself or because she was hiding it from me. I saw no reason for her to hide anything, not when we were all on the same team, so I chalked it down to instinct. Sheer animal instinct that had herknowingsomething she shouldn’t.

When I remained pressed to the back of the shower wall, she narrowed her eyes at me. I half expected her to pounce, but she didn’t. Instead, she stepped forward and opened the shower door then stepped out into the bathroom. I was so focused on her that I saw the tremor in her limbs, the shake to her body as she tried to keep herself under control. The sight perturbed me because it meant she was still weak, and of course she was. She’d been unconscious for days on end. Why would she think she was ready for my mauling her?

The sound of her brushing her teeth had me almost chuckling through the despair swirling inside me. God, I wanted to go to her, wanted to taste her and explore her and accept the invitation she’d given me so freely, but how could I?

No decent man would take what she was offering, not when she was still so frail.

It didn’t matter that the Hell Hound was in charge?—

The shower door slammed open again, and this time, she was in the doorway, her body bare and her hands clamped down on either side of the frame. I saw the beast in her eyes, saw it in the heavy shake of her chest, and heard it when she grated out, “You deny me you?”

The words were so strange, so archaic, that I knew the beast was utterly in control. It didn’t happen often, but it did in a high-stress situation.

Reed would be better suited to dealing with her because he was a Hell Hound himself and they could both fuck each other’s rage out of the other. Instead, she was stuck with me, and I saw in her face, in the tightening of her fists on the doorframe, that no one but me would do.

My Vampire, being the prick he was, decided to leap to the challenge.

Both our creatures were in control now, and God help her for triggering that particular catalyst.

There was no going back, no turning back time.

She’d have to accept the consequences of her actions now.

FIVE

EVE

Half of me felt like I was the walking dead. The other half? I was alive. On fire and burning for my mate, because that was Samuel. He just didn’t know it yet. But it was time to Choose him and time to Claim him. Time for him to wear my mark and for me to wear his scars.

I shuddered at the thought and allowed him to haul me over his shoulder, my naked body on display, and deep into the bedroom I didn’t even recall falling asleep in.

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