Page 72 of Lost and Bound
“Jared,” he whispered. And he shut his eyes again, squeezing them tight. Was that…yeah, it was, a tear escaping at the corner of his eye. When he opened them again, both were shiny from more than the glow of his alpha magic. “You’re. Fuck. Jared, you’re alive.”
I gazed into his eyes, caught and held like I had been the very first time I’d looked at him. I’d been afraid of him then.
Fear was the last thing I could ever imagine feeling for him now.
“Because you saved my life. You came for me. You—I’m never going to forgive you for throwing your life away for me.” I stroked the side of his face, and he turned his head and pressed a kiss to my palm, still gazing up at me.
“Same to you,” he said, his voice still weak but with a growl to it all the same. “You made me break my promise. I almost killed you. Again.”
The look in his eyes and the way he kissed my fingertips on the last word kind of negated the growl, and I found myself smiling down at him, helplessly, my eyes wet too.
Allergies. I had allergies to all the dust in this room.
No, no more excuses. I was fucking crying, because I loved him so fucking much and I’d thought I’d never hear his voice again.
I leaned down, a breath away from his mouth. “I think I owe you a kiss.”
When our lips met, it wasn’t like all the gross descriptions in books for tweens, with the explosions and the flashing lights and the singing birds or the whatnot. Calder’s lips were painfully dry, and I was trembling.
But it felt like coming home at last, and when he put his arms around me and pulled me down against his chest, the last of my fear and anxiety evaporated. Calder had me. He’d never let me go, I knew it.
I lifted my head enough to see him, my lips still tingling. I flicked out my tongue to moisten them, and his eyes followed the movement, sharpening in that predatory way I loved so much.
Speaking of. “I love you.”
Calder’s eyes flicked back to mine, and his brows drew together dangerously. “Don’t.”
I pulled back a little more, so that he could get the full force of my glare. “Fuck you, Calder! Don’t, what? Don’t express normal human emotion? You told me you loved me! Are we only allowed to say that shit when one or both of us is experiencing massive fucking organ failure?”
His eyes widened, and his lips twitched—like I’d almost made him laugh.
“You—Jared, you’re fucking unbelievable. How can you joke—it’s the bond, I told you, you don’t feel—”
“I wasn’t joking!” I poked him in the chest and turned the glare up a notch, because seriously? “And don’t tell me how I feel! I know how I feel. I may be a redneck werewolf who eats too much pizza—”
“What?”
“—but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot!”
“Pizza. Fucking—never mind the pizza. Fuck. It’s the bond. I couldn’t help it, letting what I was feeling through. You don’t love me.” His voice shook as he said that, and his arms tightened around me until it almost hurt. He was getting his strength back really fucking quickly. “You can’t love me!”
“Screw the bond,” I shot back, and ducked down to kiss him again—because Calder soundedanguished, as if protesting against my loving him was ripping his heart out.
The kiss went on longer than I’d intended, Calder kissing me desperately, his hand wound in my hair to hold me there for him to plunder. I was panting and breathless by the time he let me go.
“Screw the bond,” I repeated, slowly and carefully, willing him to understand. “It’s not the bond. I loved you just as much when you were unconscious and not sending anything through. I loved you before you tried to die for me like an idiot. I love you now, and I’m not going to stop loving you just because you say I can’t!”
I sounded like a petulant child, one step from from stomping my foot, and I turned away, feeling incredibly stupid.
Calder slid his hand from my hair and around to cup the side of my face, gently turning me back to him.
“I’ve only ever loved one other person in my life,” he said softly. “And not like this. I’ve never loved anyone like this. Like I love you. If you change your mind, it’ll kill me. And I’m not even sure I could let you go if you did change your mind. So I need you to be sure. Jared, please be sure.”
The look in his eyes was too much for me to take. Calder wasn’t a man to beg, but he was begging me:me, Jared Armitage, spleen-less and half-broken, a werewolf who couldn’t shift, a man who’d made so many terrible mistakes. I ducked down and buried my face against his neck, squeezing my eyes shut against more stupid tears, wrapping my arms around him and clutching at him like a lifeline.
“I love you,” I whispered into his neck. “I’ll do anything you tell me, except letting you go.”
For a long time, he just held me there, his arms rigid around me and his chest rising and falling quickly under me. “Anything I tell you?”
