Page 130 of Demon's Bane

“I was not living,” he says solemnly. “Not in any way that mattered. When my father died, I was consumed by grief and regret and by the idea that I’d failed him, that I’d failedeveryoneby leaving the way I had. I didn’t see any other way forward than to atone for those mistakes.”

My chest aches with everything I wanted to say to him back in the grotto, with reassurances I’m not sure are mine to give, but Rhett beats me to it.

“I was wrong. About all of it, I was wrong. And it almost cost me you.”

“It didn’t. I wouldn’t have… I never meant to…”

He soothes away the words with a gentle brush of his lips against mine. “You never would have been happy staying there, in the demon realm, not with everything you’ve built for yourself here.” Another kiss, against my forehead this time. “And I wouldn’t have been happy there, either. Iwasn’thappy there. And it only took the Goddess leading me to the greatest blessing I could ever imagine to make me understand that.”

I only realize there are tears rolling down my cheeks when Rhett wipes them away with the pad of his thumb.

“No tears, little mate,” he murmurs. “I did not mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” I shift again so I can reach around him and rest my arms on his broad shoulders, tangle my fingers in his hair. “I just… I don’t want you to feel like you’re sacrificing it all for me.”

“It’s no sacrifice. There’s only one thing in this life I cannot live without.”

“And what’s that?”

His smile is warm, teasing, edged with dark promise as his lip draws back to expose a hint of fang. “Do you really need me to tell you, little mate?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

Rhett rests a hand at the base of my throat, thumb pressed into the divot there like he could mark the racing of my pulse.

“As long as your heart beats, it will be the one mine aches for, Joan. And as long as I have breath in my lungs, I’ll breathe for you. Only you. Always you.”

He seals the words with a kiss. Gentle, at first, but melting into liquid flame, burning hotter with each passing moment. At least until I pull away, breath hitched, to meet smoldering crimson eyes.

“And I can’t live without you. Only you. Always you.”

A stutter in all of that heat, a thread of uncertainty. “Little mate, you do not owe me—”

“Who said anything about owing?” I dip my lips to the side of his throat. “You’re in my blood, Rhett.” A hand on his horn, tipping his head back so I can run my teeth along the soft, warm skin there. “And humans might not have mates like demons do, but you’re mine.” A press of those teeth, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to have him groaning again. “Mine to keep.”

I pull back to meet his eyes as I say it, letting him hear me, see me, know there’s no doubt in my mind he belongs to me as surely as I belong to him.

When his lips meet mine, it makes me think of the kiss we shared in the mining tunnel after the cave-in. Soft, reassuring, achingly tender as we both remind ourselves we’re real, here, together.

That softness only lasts for a moment, though, until a renewed kick of heat bursts into life between us. Insistent. Consuming. Burning away all the rest of the questions and complications that really don’t matter right now.

Rhett shifts me in his arms so I’m straddled across his lap.

It gives me better access to him, makes it easier to bury my hands in his long, unbound hair and hold him just how I want, tug against those strands until a growl rumbles in his chest.

“Joan,” he groans, pulling his hands off me and leaning as far away from me as he can. “We shouldn’t. You’re still healing, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’ll be careful. And I’m not so fragile, my mate.” I melt into him as I speak, try to catch his mouth in another kiss, but he doesn’t let me.

“Say it again.”

Rhett’s eyes are filled with hope, with more of that aching tenderness that cuts right to the center of me.

“My mate.”

42

Rhett

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