Page 71 of Love the Way You Lion
“What do you mean, what happened? I mean, I know you know what happened,” she says, twirling a strand of hair around her finger and staring at it as if it holds the secret to eternal life.
This is odd. Taurus has mentioned several times that while she’s a wildcat in public, she’s not the same in private. I’ve not experienced this variation of the cat before. Our interactions were always comfortable for her; she’s never seemed hesitant. I find myself at a bit of a loss because I don’t want to assume or over-reach, but this is not my normal behavior, either. I need her to let me know what’s going on in her head.
“You mean that?” She points at the bite mark on my leg, breaking the silence again.
I frown, feeling less certain than I did before. “I know what happened. I’m not clear on the why, I guess. As this was a first for me, I’m feeling like I don’t want to be the gnome.” Looking over my shoulder, I murmur, “He’s going to have more issues than I do, I know it.”
Again, she surprises me by rolling her eyes. “You are so not her. He is not him. No one is them but them, trust me on that.” Her face darkens for a moment as if recounting something painful, then returns to normal. Chewing her lip, she shrugs as if her moods aren’t changing by the minute. “I found you attractive before this. Once we got up close and personal, it was more like needed.”
“I don’t understand. I’m getting damn frustrated with myself because I say that a lot with you two.”
It doesn’t help that she’s bouncing between deep darks to blasé to insecurity, either. I’m trying to read her expressions and not accidentally read her emotions because that’d violate privacy. I needhelp, though, because I go by what people say, and she’s not saying much that helps me.
“You’re not her. This correlates with them in no way at all. I speak for both of us on that, I know.” The shadow crosses her features again, and then she looks serious. “What I meant was that I’d wanted you to bite me before. Once we were physical, it became imperative. I know they’ll have issues relating to others, themselves, and maybe even to us. That’s theirs to work out. Rafe has the patience of a saint, and me—well, I’m me.”
“I know all about his patience. He’s put up with a lot from me.” There’s that darkness again as she muses to herself. She mentions nothing about herself, and that doesn’t jibe with what Taurus told me about his relationship with her. Sometimes he has to pull it out of her, but she talks about what she thinks once you bait her. She’s so quiet and thoughtful, and that is not what I would expect at all.
I roll onto my back and look at the ceiling as she works out how to respond. I think that perhaps there is something important that these two are keeping because they aren’t ready to tell it. Something to do with Sari and Wilde, if my guess is right, and the worse Sari behaves, the deeper this Wilde rabbit hole goes, the closer we come to one of them spitting it out.
Taurus hasn’t noticed because they are so synced that these little micro-expressions aren’t triggering him. They are triggering my empath abilities. I can’t help but wonder what is so awful that neither of them has discussed it, not even Deli telling Taurus. That, my friends, is a scary, deep dark, and I don’t like it at all.
“What did I say?” she asks, looking curious.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I feel insecure. I’m used to discussing my feelings. I don’t want to harp or nag or seem neurotic.” I shake my head and then roll out of bed, looking for the robe Hex gave me because my clothes are toast.
“You’re not harping. I guess you could do that instead,” she whispers, her hair falling to spill over her face.
“Sorry; I move fast.”
I see her nod, the curtain of red moving, her face concealed. “I noticed.”
“See? That. I don’t know what you meant.” I hunt around for Precious, feeling the need to have something solid and familiar to comfort my frayed nerves.
She shrugs, still obscured by a mass of scarlet waves. Her voice is soft, and I have to stop hunting around to get closer to hear her better. “You’re gone. It hurt, I guess. I mean, I know I’m not—that I don’t seem... It’s not like it’s unusual for people to do that.” She stops talking and shrugs again. If it’s possible, she’s gotten even less wordy in the past minute and a half.
“Hurt?” I climb on the bed and crawl over to her, frowning in my confusion. What did I do? “What hurts?”
“You left. Poof, you left like it didn’t mean...” Scooting a bit, she tucks into a small ball sheltered in that mass of tangles, and I see what Taurus means when he says she can turtle with the best of them. She’s about as small as someone of her height could be without disappearing. “It’s okay. I understand. I know how it goes.”
What in the hell is she talking about? How it goes? I tilt my head and look at her, trying to figure out what’s gotten her so closed off when it hits me. She said she understands, that I left.
Oh, hell.
“I wasn’t leaving. I was feeling exposed, so I was going to put my clothes on. I was feeling nervous, and I feel better when I flip my blade if I’m nervous. Rafe might have mentioned that?”
I see the skin on her arms flush red, but not her face. I must have hit the nail on the head. She thought I was getting up and trotting out, finished with her now that it scratched my itch. Taurus said she had abandonment issues, and boy, he wasn’t kidding. Apparently, they’re exacerbated in relation to females.
Fucking Sari and fucking Rhea.
Those bitches ruin everything and everyone they touch. I look at the powerful woman that my mate loves more than breath tucked into a shell so tight that it’s amazing she can breathe, waiting like an abused animal for me to trample her emotionally. She hasn’t moved more than a few muscles since I got up.
It’s like I hit a trigger and she gave up. What have they done to her? Just as importantly, what have they done to Rafe that I don’t know about?
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I just—I’m sure he mentioned it. I didn’t mean to be a pain.”
Now she’s apologizing because I unintentionally hurt her? I sigh and move over closer, pushing her hair back off her face. She loosens a little, and I wedge my way into the ball she’s curled in, setting my head on her stomach once she lets me. I blink for a second, remembering Maeve, and look panicked. “This doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“Nope. Someday I’ll be a whale, and that would be hard to do, but it doesn’t bother me.”
