Page 43 of Bad Moon Rising
She was tempted to move in closer. A few minutes ago, she’d been lying on his chest, the impossible warmth of his skin under her hands. She wanted him. Badly. And unless she was secretly terrible at reading people, he wanted her right back. She could almost see arcs of electricity radiating between them. She couldn’t breathe.
All of a sudden, he shuttered his eyes, paled, and sucked in a breath. “Get away. It wants me to hurt you. It’s pushing me hard.” He wheezed and stumbled away to fall against the kitchen counter. “Fuck you, I won’t do it.” He shook his head.
That wasn’t him talking to her, but to it…the curse. It was punishing him again.
On instinct, she wrapped her hand around his tattooed wrist. A rhyme came to her head that she whispered,“Ease the punishment forsooth, until he can discern the truth.”
He yanked his wrist away. “How did you do that? It’s gone. The pain…”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The words just came into my head.”
“It’s not possible. The curse is magic.”
“Dom seemed to believe I have a bit of magic in me. Who knows? Maybe the way to fight magic is with magic?”
“Can you keep doing it, though? I don’t know when the compulsion to kill you will override my will.” He backed away from her.
“You said yourself you’d only follow me. There’s no point in me running.” She nodded at the window. “I’m going to get information from her. I want to know how she knows I’m here. Maybe she knows more about who I am.”
He’d moved close. The planes of his chest pressed into her shoulder as he peeked through a crack in the curtain. His heat beckoned, and his presence comforted her.
“That’s futile,” he said. “Whomever they’re chasing is a shadow. Even it if was you, it isn’t who you are now unless your amnesia is an act.”
She whispered, “I wish it was. I’d give anything to know myself. Do I have a husband or someone else? I think I like men.” She gave a wry laugh. Understatement of the century. “Yes, pretty sure that’s true, at least I liked our kiss, and I have fantasies of us. But maybe I like women, too. I don’t know. Do I like coffee? Who are my parents? Do I like my hair up?” She chanced a glance over her shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her. “You think I was a spy or something? If so, who did I work for?”
His eyes flickered down to hers. “I have a lead we should explore that might give us some answers before we leave England, maybe find your family. But I still think you should go your own way. I don’t know if I… I might hurt you. I might be half asleep and do it.” His voice grew hoarse. “I don’t want to. I’d rather die than hurt you.” He held his breath and massaged his wrist.
“I believe in you.” She stepped forward and hugged him, pressing herself firmly against him and sighing in relief. Her body relaxed.
Messed up. She was sure this was some complicated psychological syndrome, falling for the person who was supposed to try to kill her.
His hand slid around her waist. “I like your hair down, but with it up…” He leaned in and pressed his nose to her neck, the touch gentle and respectful. This wasn’t the touch of a male who wanted in his heart to murder her. He felt safe. He always felt safe.
Her eyelids drifted closed on a soft, “Oh.”
Abruptly, he stopped and stepped away from her. “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have kissed you, either. I have no right.” His face turned stormy with surprise and then regret as he touched a pendant beneath his shirt.
He was turned on. Very turned on.
The unmated female cannot have physical contact without permission from their guardian. Males have lost limbs or their life for so little.
A male had said that to her long ago. Her father? She pushed to grasp the wisps of the memory and see the speaker, but it was gone.
“This is wrong. I’m not just talking on a species level, but about the fact I am not my own person. I can’t have…attachments,” he said. He turned around, rearranged himself and stalked to the kitchen sink to splash water on his face. Finding no hand towel or a paper towel, he wiped off with a sleeve. “We can’t… This, whatever it may be, is over.”
Nova wanted the right to choose when and if she was with a male, whether it be with or without the bonds of matrimony, and whether it be a human or with a lycan. Ancient society rules be damned. Guilt assailed her from years of tradition and protocol crammed down her throat by her mother who’d died so long ago—how to look at a male, how to address him, the dos and don’ts of conduct.
Her mother? She couldn’t remember what she looked like but recalled her essence.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “Doing it gave me some flashbacks about our species’ protocol.” She touched his arm. All his muscles tensed as if he would pull away. “There’s no one here to give permission. There’s only me. I decide what’s acceptable.”
“For you but not me. Iambound by society rules to a large extent and to my curse.”
He yanked his arm away from her and stepped back. “How do I know you’re not exploiting weakness in me?”
…
Great. All Roman could do was stare at her and imagine what she’d look like naked on the kitchen counter. He dropped his head to cut off her hurt expression. She wouldn’t like knowing she wore her emotions so obviously in her eyes. The mental lockdown he put on their fantasy foray into all kinds of naked was so complete that he felt like he’d been whacked in the head.
