Page 23 of Can't Bite This Feeling
He slides down my body, resting his head on my breasts and pressing his ear to my racing heart.
“Never leave me again,” he whispers brokenly, and I feel the splash of his tear between my breasts.
“Never,” I promise vehemently, stroking my fingers through his hair. “You’re mine, too.”
Chapter 6
Rapha
“What is that?”
The words leave my mouth like a snarl before I’ve even processed them.
Drusilla looks up from her plate, startled. “What is what?”
We’re in the garden, surrounded by blooms she’s coaxed into thriving, the air thick with the scent of herbs and lavender. It’s supposed to be peaceful here. Ibuiltthis for her. I built thisfor us.
After the way I touched her just hours ago, how she trembled for me, opened to me, I should feelwhole. Sated. Content.
But something ugly twists in my chest, a wrongness rising in my blood like smoke from an unseen fire. This fury, this tightness in my jaw and fists… it isn’t natural. It feels like a foreign thing, like something has taken up residence inside me, whispering grievances I don’t remember collecting.
I rise, pacing toward the fluttering white linens pinned to a makeshift line between two trees.
“This,” I snap, yanking one end of the cloth like it’s betrayed me. “Why are these out here? Why aren’t you using the dryer in the house?”
She blinks at me, confused. “Because I prefer it this way. You know that.”
“But you don’thaveto do these things anymore,” I grind out, the words coming faster, harsher. “That’s the entire point, Drusilla. You don’t have to scrub or stitch or hang clothes in the wind like some peasant girl. I gave youeverything.Machines that can do this in half the time. You could spend your hours reading, learning,creating,resting.”
Her brows pull tight. “Ilikedoing this. It centers me. And no, I don’t want your machines. I’ve told you that?—”
“You’re beingsilly,” I bark, cutting across her. My hand tightens on the sheet as I rip it off the line and storm toward the house.
She’s behind me instantly. “Put those back, Rapha!”
Her voice is sharp now, filled with anger. Something about her defiancesnapssomething loose in me.
I whirl on her, the linen clenched in my fist, my breath coming too fast. “No.”
My voice is deeper than it should be. Rougher. Not mine. Notjustmine.
She flinches but doesn’t back down. “You’re overreacting.”
Heat floods my veins. It’s not lust. It’s not hunger. It’srage.A fire I can’t explain, can’t put out. A beast with my face and her name in its mouth.
I should feel peace after touching her. I should feel calm in her presence. But this fury coils through me like poison,something not entirely me. Something planted. Something fed.
“I don’t understand,” I say, but it comes out as a growl. “You act like I haven’t sacrificedeverythingfor you. You think I didn’t bleed for you, suffer for you,killfor you?”
Her eyes flash with hurt and fury. “I didn’taskfor any of that, Rapha. I didn’t ask to be resurrected, or dragged through centuries, or trapped in this house with a demon who doesn’t even remember how to behuman.”
I stagger back like she’s driven a blade between my ribs.
She keeps coming. “You’re acting like every man who’s tried to control me. My father. The husband he picked for me. The men who said they loved me while putting me in cages. You swore you’d never become them.”
Her words gut me.
I open my mouth to speak, toapologize, but somethingcoldslithers up my spine. That familiar pull.
