Page 19 of Tempting Shadowed Hearts
I bite my lip. “He’s the one who took my virginity. My father killed him as a warning of what would happen if the guards touched me again and as a punishment for my putting his guards in danger.”
Skin rippling, she growls, “Apparently, you have a habit of attracting disgusting men.”
My mouth pops open. “Excuse me?”
She takes a step toward me, and my glamour drops, but that doesn’t stop her from crowding my space. “Both of the men you’ve allowed to touch you have been rapists and murderers. Hell, most of the men your father employed to guard you over the years were shitty people—although your father was a questionable man himself, so it doesn’t surprise me with the company he kept. I just wish he had done better to keep his daughter safe.”
Her bringing up my choice in the men I let touch me feels like a punch to the gut. I can’t deny that Merric was a bad guy, but I suppose I didn’t know enough about Calen, or any of the other guards my father employed, well enough to say what kind of men they were.
Who my father was is a whole other story. I never knew what he did outside our home, but I knew exactly the man he was around me. He’d told me numerous times while I was growingup that I was a disappointment and that I’d destroyed his life when I was born. He blamed me for my mother’s death, even though it wasn’t truly my fault.
Her labor with me was hard on her body. Back then, things were very different from what they are now. There were no ultrasound machines or heart rate monitors for the baby in the mother’s womb. My mother spent three days laboring at home with a midwife checking on her periodically before she began to bleed profusely. My father rushed her to the hospital, insisting there was something wrong. They took her back quickly and were about to do a cesarean section when my mother felt me coming out. The doctor positioned himself between her legs just in time to catch me, but then his eyes met mine, and he turned to stone.
My father was the first to notice something was wrong. For whatever reason, the nurses weren’t around, so my father called out for help because my mom was still bleeding. It took too long for another doctor to arrive, but there wasn’t much they could’ve done—she’d already lost far too much blood.
When my father finally got to hold me, he refused to look into my eyes, knowing the curse placed on his family nearly a millennium before had finally presented itself. My father never did tell me about the curse before he passed. The staff in the houses we occupied over the years explained that the curse was the reason he hid me away from the world.
Everyone knows gorgons are dangerous, and as much as I was a disappointment to him, I was his daughter, so I took solace in knowing he tried to protect me. Or who knows, maybe he was protecting everyone else by keeping me from going out and inadvertently turning others to stone.
I settle back in my chair and cross my arms over my chest. “I can’t help that I crave attention—I never got any growing up because of what I am. So, forgive me for getting attention fromthe men who would give it to me. Instead, blame my father for never giving me what I deserved.”
She takes a deep breath, and the rippling of her skin slows until it stops altogether. Then, she takes a step away from me. “I can understand that. I’m sorry.”
I shrug my shoulders. “What do you really want, doppelgänger?”
Her nose scrunches. “I don’t like your calling me that. My name is Avyanna.”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “Fine, Avyanna. What do you want with me?”
“We’ve already established this,” she says with an exasperated sigh.
“Because I make you feel… different? That doesn’t make sense to me in the least.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, seen as much as I have, and experienced as much as I have, you become desensitized. Only one other person has made me feel something over the last few centuries besides pain and hatred toward the world that robbed me of so much of my life. One look at you, and I was obsessed. I can’t explain it, and I’m not completely sure why yet, but I have to know what’s different about you.”
My brows slam down. “Okay, but what if that’s not whatIwant? What if I just want to go home?”
A dark laugh leaves her lips. “You don’t want to go back to being caged. You made thatveryclear last night when I told you I was bringing you here.”
“My family has several places I can stay,” I counter.
“Your father’s men will find you at any of his homes, and you know that.”
I shake my head. “There’s no way I can stay with you. I don’t even know you.”
“You know my name, and you know what I am. There aren’t many others who can say they do.”
“What little I know about your kind isn’t anything good, hence why I only know of you all as skinwalkers. Your kind are the things of nightmares to most supes.”
Her lip curls. “My kind is nearly extinct, all thanks to the fear surrounding what we can do.”
I raise my hands in defense. “I’m just telling you what I know, which, like I said, isn’t much. It does little to ease my fear of you.”
A wicked smile lifts the corner of her lips. “You weren’t so scared of me last night when I undressed you and lay beside you while we were both naked.”
My face flushes. “I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open! Plus, I didn’t even know you climbed into the bed with me.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I could also smell your arousal this morning while I was making breakfast, right before I turned around to greet you. You weren’t so scared then.”
