Page 90 of Live To Tell

“Um. If you like, but that’s not typical for a girl.”

“Am I typical?”

His huge palms close over my cheeks. “Violet. I don’t need an apology. I want you to tell me how you feel in your crystal clear, no holds barred Violet way.”

“I care deeply for you and want you in my life,” I say through squashed cheeks. “A few weeks ago, I intended to utilize my friendship with you for mutual benefit—I clear my name, Rowan gets help with his spell, and you escape the threat to your future. Then I would leave Thornwood and all of you.”

“And now?”

“All our lives and emotions are tangled together. The pull towards you when you’re missing confused me and as the days passed, I realized that would never change. I’m not easy or straightforward, even if I’m forthright, and I aggravate people.”

“Aggravate is a bit strong. Frustrate on a lot of levels, maybe.” He sighs and strokes my hair. “Are we acquaintances, friends, or more? That’s all I need to hear.”

Chapter 31

VIOLET

Friends or more. That intangible and unexplainable spark of need that accompanies my desire for Leif’s presence. He kissed me at the dance and apologized, but seeing him after many days apart had already lit up my evening and distracted me from the matter at hand. If only he knew that the moment I saw his figure in the doorway at the dance, I’d almost walked up to and placed my lips on his, hugged him tight, but instead wanted answers first.

“Would the Violet Blackwood you first met ever tell someone she had a consort?” I ask.

“I hate the word.”

“Oh. Then instead, should I tell people we’re much more than friends and that I love you? That I’ll always protect you and that includes against elders who want your life?”

His fingers tighten on my face. “You love me?” he asks, almost inaudibly.

“I am struggling to define the word, but know I have tangible emotions for you. So, yes, love by some definition. Yours, I hope.”

He shakes his head. “As straight an answer as I’m likely to get. More than as a friend?”

“I don’t desire my friends, Leif.” His softened eyes now widen in surprise. “I would not sit here all afternoon and evening thinking of you as obsessively as the tiara, nor would I hurt because you walked away.”

Leif splutters and drops my face, shaking his head as he steps back. “Nobody compared me to an item of jewelry before.”

I reach out to curl my hand around the jewelry he wears; the pendant that keeps him safe. The metal’s warm, his skin soft over taut muscle. No, I don’t need Leif’s protection, but in his arms I feel oddly safe.

Oddly a few things.

I shove him in the chest until he stumbles further from me, and his mouth turns down. “You say one thing and do another.”

After another light shove, the back of Leif’s knees hit my bed, forcing him to sit. As I clamber onto his lap, straddling his wide hips, he takes a sharp breath. Leif shares the fever-like heat my fathers do—another tell he has the shifter blood he doesn’t want, his body hot against mine.

The first time Leif took hold and engulfed me, dragging me away from the shifters at the memorial service, the power in him took me by surprise. Nothing I couldn’t fight off, but Leif arrested me when he wrapped me in his arms, and I couldn’t move.

For the first time ever, I’d yielded to somebody who touched me. I never noticed, but that was the point something clicked between us, as if magnets snapping together. I had no experience of or explanation for this until he began to feature more in my thoughts. My desire for justice and fairness for this big guy switched direction and became a different desire.

Only at the moment he walked into the academy after staying away for days did I realize my fondness for Leif ran much, much deeper.

Our difference in size has never been more apparent than now. The hands holding my waist are twice the size of the slender ones I place on his bulging shoulder muscles, his thighs twice the width of mine. And the power I never register, constrained by his gentleness around me, has never been more evident than what surrounds him now.

I’d never be vulnerable around Leif—only my heart, as I discovered today—but this massive guy protects me. Leif keeps me safe by protecting me from myself, a phrase I once couldn’t understand. He’s level-headed and calm; a protective barrier between me and my darker, angrier side.

Leif needs to tip his face to look at me and hair falls from his eyes. I rub the back of my fingers against his stubbled cheek and he catches my fingers to kiss the tips.

“I would never say you’re my consort if I didn’t hold deep feelings for you, Leif,” I say quietly and drape my hands across his shoulders, bending my head, lips almost touching his.

His heavier breaths mingle with mine and he pushes my long hair from my face, rough fingertips grazing heat on my cheek.

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