Page 47 of Vicar
“I’ve never loved a man,” she said softly. “Or I never thought I did, anyway.” She searched his eyes, recalling how many times she’d done that over the years. How much comfort and solace she had found in them. Exhilaration and excitement. He was home. The home she’d forgotten to remember. “I think I might love you too...I think...”
She trailed off because she wasn’t sure how to phrase everything she felt. There was too much. So many emotions. But one thing was certain. Something she felt soul deep.
“I never had to balance you out.” She shook her head. “I never needed to fix you.”
“Something that’s become your life mission with other men,” he murmured, still doing that thing with his thumb that drove her to distraction. That was slowly but surely making her body come alive again. Or more alive than it already was around him.
“Why do you think that is?” he prompted, wondering about the men before him. Or, technically speaking, those after him. “While balancing your sisters was second nature, you didn’t do the same for men, no? You didn’t balance their energy. You simply felt the need to fix them?”
“Yeah.” She gave his question some thought. “Honestly, I’m not sure why either. I just...” What? When had it begun? “I guess from the beginning, I sought out guys who were struggling. The boy next door whose parents were divorcing. The guy whose previous girlfriend had treated him like crap.” She narrowed her eyes, sensing something in it now that she couldn’t quite pin down. “It was important to me to help them. To make them better. Almost like...”
When she trailed off, unsure why she suddenly felt this way, he urged her to go on.
“I felt like I owed them, I guess.” She pressed her lips together, emotional. “Like it was my fault they were that way.”
His brows pulled together. “Why would it be your fault?”
“I don’t know.” More aware of his masculine scent by the moment, by the heat of his strong body, she gestured between them. “Though I never wanted to fix you when we were younger, the moment I felt you needed help now, I wanted to be there for you. Wanted to reach across time and make things right.”
Make what things right? It was related to his multiple personalities somehow. She was sure of it.
“What do you remember about that?” Clearly picking up on arousal she couldn’t control, he reeled her even closer. Let her feel the hard ridge straining against his leather pants. “You claim you didn’t do it, but you did. You brought my Sigdir side to the surface effortlessly despite over a thousand years between us.”
“No doubt because of our connection.” Emotions kept rolling through her that she didn’t understand. Ones that threatened to overwhelm her. “I have no recollection of doing it, though. I’ve had strange dreams. Ones I’m sure had to do with you. But I don’t remember talking to you through Jade or Maya.” She wiped away an unexpected tear. “I feel now like I wanted to. Had to. That I owed it to you.” She cleared her throat when it thickened. “I think I felt like I couldn’t imagine not helping you. That...”
When she broke off, too emotional to keep going, he wrapped his arms around her and held her while she wept. Not because of her need to fix him but because of the intense connection between them. The overwhelming emotions. How had she forgotten how much she’d cared about him? How much she actually loved him? Loved him from the moment he coaxed her out from underneath his bed. From the second he made her feel safe when she knew, without question, she’d been subjected to pure hell before being born.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said gently, stroking her hair, so very opposite of the Vicar everyone had come to know. “I promise you we will.”
She nodded, grateful to be in his arms. To know he didn’t hate her when he should. To have his support.
“Why would I hate you?” he rumbled. “You did nothing—”
“But I think I did,” she whispered, startled by her vague thoughts. She met his eyes. “I feel like I hurt you a great deal. Like I need your forgiveness.”
“But you don’t.” He shook his head. “Because no matter what happened, no matter what we forgot, remember that Violence was likely at the heart of it. Violence who made you do whatever you did.”
“Or,” she reminded him, “my Múspellsheimr side.”
A Múspellsheimr side that seemed non-existent when she was a baby dragon but had clearly progressed as time went on.
“That’s what we focus on first, then. Who you were before Múspellsheimr started influencing you so much.” Vicar brushed his lips across hers. “And we do it by continuing to remember.” He led her to a fire he manifested by the shore and sat her beside a small table with roasted meat and a glass of chilled white wine. “Sit, eat, and wait. Because I’m certain if we do, more memories will manifest. More answers will reveal themselves.”
She nodded, grateful he wasn’t angry because she felt like he should be. That she had done somethingthatbad. Something she both wished and dreaded remembering based on how horrible she felt.
An emotion echoed in what appeared next.
