Page 91 of Malice
“How do you know you’ll be able to stop him? He can appear as anyone.”
“He’s been showing up as the same man in every dream I’ve shared with him. Mal saw him and recognized his face.”
I sat up straight and dragged a hand through my hair. “Once he realizes you’re wise to him, he’ll stop doing that. Fuck, kitten, he could pretend to be me.”
“No,” she said, so emphatically it stopped me short.
“How can you be sure?”
“I know your signature. I could pick you out of a crowd of millions. Same with the others. There’s no way he could ever make me think he was one of you.”
I sort of loved that.
“My signature?”
“Yeah, like your personal mental print.” She shrugged. “I’m not great with the terminology, but you get the idea. I can feel you... here.” She pressed her palm to her heart and then did the same to mine with her free hand.
A smile twisted my lips as I rested my palm over hers. “Same here.”
“Is it because you luuuurve me?” she teased.
“Yup,” I said with an unrepentant grin. “Just like you love me.”
“Guilty as charged.”
The topic was the elephant in the room I knew we needed to discuss. Love wasn’t an easy subject for either of us. It came with deep connections and ties we’d both been afraid of. Love meant I could be rejected. It meant we could lose everything. But it also meant we could gain so much. It had been centuries since I’d last even considered the big L. Horsemen certainly didn’t have any need of it. But when Merri came into our lives, she changed everything.
Now, loving her was practically the only thing I thought about.
The intimacy of the moment washed over us. We may have already admitted our feelings out on the battlefield, but it was different doing it here when it was just the two of us.
“You okay with that?” she asked softly, reaching out to run her fingers along my cheek.
“More than okay.”
“So why do you look like you just bit into a lemon?”
A bark of laughter escaped. “Well, I’m not gonna lie, kitten. I’m fucking terrified. I’ve never loved anyone but myself. Not once. What if I fuck it all up?”
“You might.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” I said dryly.
“But so could I,” she added with a one-shoulder shrug.
“I doubt it.”
She snuggled closer until her chin rested on my shoulder. “You want to know a secret?”
“Obviously.”
“Love should never be measured by its length. Only its depth. So, if you do go and fuck it all up, at least we will have this to remember it by.”
I couldn’t decide whether the right move was to shove her off the bed or pull her closer. I chose to believe the truth in what she said, that we had to live in this moment to moment rather than looking to a future we weren’t certain existed. So, I pulled her to me and kissed her.
“You know,” I said around the kiss, “we were supposed to try and knock you up in that dream. Maybe we should give the old-fashioned way a try and do it with our eyes open?”
Holding her as tight as I was, there was no missing the way she tensed.
