Page 26 of Bite of Midnight
“You’re safe now,” I whisper against her hair. “I’ve got you.”
She buries her face against my chest, and I feel her whole body tremble, not from the cold, but from everything she’s been holding in.
I shut the door behind us, the storm still roaring outside, and lower my mouth to her ear.
“You came back.”
Her voice is a whisper against my chest. “I couldn’t stay away.”
The sound of it nearly undoes me.
I hold her tighter, my hands sliding up and down her back to warm her. “You’re freezing,” I murmur. “Let’s get you dry.”
She nods against me, and I guide her toward the fire, my heart still pounding with the wild, undeniable truth that she came back.
She’s shivering in my arms, soaked through to the bone, water dripping down her hair and onto the floor, and something inside me snaps.
“What the hell were you doing out in this storm?” The words come out rougher than I intend, a low growl rumbling through my chest. “You could have been hurt. Killed.Fuck, Calla.”
Her head jerks up, eyes wide, lips trembling. “I, I just needed to think.”
“Think?” My voice sharpens, cracking like the thunder outside. “You pick the worst night in a century to go for a drive because youneeded to think?”
“I didn’t plan it!” she says, her voice breaking on the words. “I just started driving, and then the rain got worse, and I, I didn’t know where else to go.”
God.
The sight of her, cold, dripping, her cheeks flushed from the wind, rips something out of me I can’t put back. I drag a hand down my face, trying to breathe past the rush of anger and panic tangling in my chest.
I could’ve lost her.
“Calla…” I say her name like a prayer and a curse all at once. “You don’t understand what that does to me. Not knowing if you’re safe, if something happened, ”
She swallows hard, her voice barely a whisper. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Scare me?” I let out a strangled sound, stepping closer until she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes. “You’re my mate, Calla. Every second I couldn’t feel you, every minute I didn’t know where you were, it was like claws under my skin.”
Her breath catches. “Damien…”
I rake my hands through my hair, pacing once, twice, before stopping in front of her again. The bond between us hums, raw and electric, responding to every spike of emotion.
“What’s going on?” I finally ask, softer this time but no less desperate. “You show up here in the middle of a goddamn storm, shaking, terrified, soaked to the bone. Talk to me. Please.”
She looks down, her hands twisting in front of her. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she admits, her voice shaking. “No matter what I did, no matter how much I told myself to stay away, it didn’t matter. I kept feeling you. Like you were everywhere.”
The admission hits me like lightning.
I take a slow step forward, careful, reverent, afraid that if I touch her too soon she’ll disappear again. “Because you’re mine,” I whisper, the truth rough in my throat. “And you feel me because I feel you.”
Her eyes lift to mine, shining in the dim firelight. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
I reach for her hand, sliding my fingers through hers, the contact grounding both of us. “Then let me help you figure it out.”
Thunder rolls overhead again, shaking the walls, but for the first time tonight, I don’t care. She’s here. She came back to me.
I lift her in my arms and carry her up the staircase until I get back to my room. I walk inside and close the door behind us. She shivers and I curse. “I need to get you out of these damn clothes. You’re soaked sweetheart.”
She nods. “Okay, Damien.” The trust I hear when she says that almost makes me lose control.
