Page 80 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
He came in a sleek, unfurling coil of gray Vapor and rose swiftly from the floor to gather in a glittering plume, hovering silently just inside the doorway. The Vapor shimmered, a thousand sparkling pinpricks of light, then coalesced into the form of a man. Feet first, then legs, then torso and arms and chest, strong and muscled, then Christian’s face and eyes, those vivid green eyes, lucent as emeralds in the shadows.
He was naked.
“You changed your phone number. You moved,” he said, sounding outraged in spite of the softness of his tone. His gaze swept over her, and he blinked, startled. His expression darkened and he growled, “And you’ve lost weight. Christ, Ember—haven’t you been eating?”
Keeping her gaze carefully above his waist-level, she snapped, “Oh, hi, it’s nice to see you, too, Christian! How’ve you been for the last two weeks? Good? Me, too! Everything’s just peachy keen as a matter of fact! So glad you broke in—glided…whatever—so we could catch up, but now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to living my life. Which doesn’t include you!”
Ember wasn’t sure exactly why she was being such a bitch, but it probably had to do with the fact that if she wasn’t yelling at him she would dissolve into tears at how much it hurt to have him standing there naked in her living room looking so beautiful and so impossibly out of reach. Because he was a gentleman at his core, if she were crying it might lead to him trying to comfort her, which might lead to her doing something pathetic and desperate like trying kiss him. Which would obviously just lead to further tragedy and heartbreak.
So going the bitch route was actually perfectly logical. Satisfied with that, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared daggers at him.
“Funny,” he drawled, “you don’t seem very happy to see me.”
“Ah, irony,” she replied in exactly the same lightly sarcastic tone. “I’ve recently become very familiar with the concept. For instance, the tragic irony of falling in love with the one person in the world guaranteed to be unable to love me back.”
The instant the words were out, she regretted them. She mashed her lips together in horror and slapped a hand over her mouth.
He tensed. His eyes flashed. Then very, very quietly, he said, “Did you just tell me you’re in love with me?”
Ember understood in that moment the true definition of the word “mortified.” Her face flamed red, and even though the room was full of shadows, she knew he saw it. She gave a little sideways jerk of her head—no—because she was too humiliated to speak, and her lips were still mashed together.
He nodded slowly, his gaze scorching the air between them. “Yes you did.”
“I want you to leave now.” Her voice was no longer steady.
“I don’t think you do. And anyway, I’m not going anywhere.”
He took a step forward. She took a step back.
Still in that deadly soft tone he asked, “Let me ask you a question, Ember. Why do you think I made the offer to buy your failing bookstore?”
Ha! I knew it! Ember said, “Because you’re a control freak who likes to butt into other people’s business?”
He shook his head. “Wrong. Guess again.”
“Because you have more money than sense?”
A corner of his mouth lifted, a dark, lopsided smile with an edge of danger that made her heart hammer against her breastbone. “Wrong again. Next question: why do you think I paid your rent?”
“So you admit that, too!”
He lifted a shoulder, unapologetic. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually. And even though it was written into the contract, Dante doesn’t exactly strike me as the type who can keep secrets.”
“Well, see my previous two answers.”
“Yet again, wrong. It’s the same reason I’m here now. Because I want to take care of you—”
“Stop. Just stop. I can’t listen to this.”
Why the hell was he even here? He’d made his feelings perfectly clear, they both knew it was a disaster, he hadn’t tried to contact her at all—
/> “I panicked,” he said abruptly, reading her face as clearly as he was obviously reading her body language. “I didn’t know what to do and so I did exactly the wrong thing. I should have talked to you. I should have done…anything other than what I did. I’m sorry. I can’t stand to be without you. I didn’t know what alone really was until I was stupid enough to walk away from you. The last two weeks have been a living hell.”
She breathed in and out in shallow, rapid breaths, trying to regain her equilibrium. His words had kindled a fire in her that was spreading liquid heat throughout her limbs, but she could think about them later, she could savor this moment later—right now she had to get him out of her apartment before she did something very, very stupid.
“No. You were right to walk away. We both know it was a mistake.”
He advanced another slow, calculated step, his eyes burning, his jaw hard. “Do we?”
