I raise an eyebrow again and fold my arms over the blankets. “Somehow, I get the idea you weren’t always so obedient.”
He blinks and then shakes his head. He turns to go and I call out to him.
“Wait.”
He turns back to me, eyes widened in mild surprised. Gosh, I love the gold color of those hesitant eyes.
“Can we be friends? If we are going to be working together, the only ones who know what’s going on, then shouldn’t we make up?”
He folds his arms and turns around. We face each other like that for a few moments. I can tell he’s resisting me. Resisting being around me. I can also tell, despite his rude words the other day about me being a lame librarian and him not looking for a mate, that he wanted to kiss me again a minute ago. He would have, if he hadn’t come to his senses.
“I don’t know if friends would work, Misty. Despite my rather considerable self control, it’s clear I want you. And as Hawes said, that’s not fair, when I’m not willing to put myself in the ring to be your mate. It’s not right.”
“But you like me?” I ask, tilting my head and studying him.
A small smile curls the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I like you. You’re the first female I’ve connected with in a long time. But that doesn’t change that I can’t have you.” He turns to go, but I call out again to stop him.
“Lindon,” I say quietly.
“Yes?” he turns back. He always turns when I call. Always comes when I want him to. Doesn’t that mean something?
“Why can’t you have me?”
He scratches his hair nervously and leans against the door. It’d be adorable if it didn’t also feel kind of sad.
“You said someone died, you had a mate. But Rafe and Aspen said you had no mate that they knew about.”
His mouth tightens into a frown, and his expression darkens. “I wouldn’t ask Rafe and Aspen anything about my past, if I were you. They are the very least likely to know the truth about things.”
“What about Hawes?” I ask. “When I was changing the other night, I heard you guys.”
His brows draw together in alarm. “You heard us?” His eyes flick to the book in my lap, for some reason.
I wave a hand. “Not much. I was trying not to, but you were being a little loud. Who is Ava?”
Lindon blinks and freezes, visibly affected by the name. “None of your business.”
“Is she the mate you lost?”
His jaw tightens, a muscle twitching at the side of it. “I don’t want to talk about this with you. You, who almost made me betray her.”
There’s a dark emotion in the room, overshadowing his golden beauty with a veil of something sad and awful.
“I guess I don’t know the rules for mating in this world, but I wouldn’t think anyone would know you and not want you to be happy.”
His mouth quirks up in a wry smile, and his dimple flashes. “I think yesterday you were probably wishing bodily harm on me.”
“Well, I meant someone who loved you enough to mate with you.”
“We weren’t mated,” he says quietly.
“But you said…”
“I said I found a mate, and she died. I didn’t say I got to mate her.” He gestures to my book. “It’s kind of like that book, except if the heroine died and the hero’s brother lived and went on to be happy while the hero died alone.” He shrugs, and his smile turns cruel and cold and insincere. “Too bad life isn’t like novels.”
I repress a shiver creeping up my spine at the implication in his voice. That he’s totally given up on anything good for himself.
“Why does the hero have to die alone?” I ask quietly, steeling myself for the answer, knowing Lindon is hurt right now, and not completely himself.
“Because,” he says, swiftly crossing the room to the bed and closing the distance between us. “I’m not willing to do this…” he takes my lips before I can so much as gasp in surprise, swiping his tongue inside my lips to own my mouth entirely for a second before withdrawing and eyeing me with cold eyes. “When I know full well my heart isn’t going to open again. It was like a flower, only blooming once, and withering, but leaving me standing. Empty like a shell.”
“Lindon,” I ask, bringing my hand to my mouth and eyeing him as he stands and withdraws angrily. “What do you do for a living? What do you do with your time all alone in this mansion?”
He smiles wryly. “I’m a writer.”
“You own this house as a writer?” I ask, surprised and a little turned on by his career despite the bad mood.
He nods slightly. “Well, along with my brothers. And I own other property. I guess you could say I’m good at helping people escape into other worlds. Goodness knows I wish I could escape myself.”
My heart pounds painfully. I want to ask him and I also don’t. It’s simply not possible that he wrote the book in my lap. It shouldn’t be.
He couldn’t be Latrice Oakfield, the enigmatic romance author who wrote one bestseller and disappeared.
I want to ask him. I really want to ask him, but I can’t. I don’t want him to look at me like I’m stupid if I’m wrong. But I also can’t stand to open up the book and read it again until I know if it truly is part of his life or not. It would feel…wrong.
“You want to ask me something?” He looks down at me imperiously, his folded arms an impervious wall between us.
“I…no.”
“Good,” he says, turning on his heel to leave.
“Wait, Lindon,” I say, leaving the bed and flying toward him, despite the fact that I’m only in my nightgown, which is a sleep tee that goes to my knees. I grab his arm and he turns, a mild blush on his high cheekbones.
“Lindon, did you write my book?” I ask.
His lips twitch. “No.”
“How did you know what happens?” I ask.
He eyes the book with a tight expression. “It was a bestseller. I like to stay caught up with the lists. And I have perfect recall and a photographic memory of words.”
I exhale in relief. Too big of a coincidence. “Oh, okay.”
“It’s sappy and stupid, a revisionist attempt at portraying reality for people in that time period. In real life, Eva would have died and had she lived, they’d not have married anyway.” He eyes me skeptically. “Then again, reality never was your preference, was it?” He shrugs. “So the book is perfect for you.”
I tighten my hand on his arm. He has a way of prickling up like a cactus to push people away, but I’m not done talking, and I’m not going to let him do his shoot and run routine.
I run my hand up his arm. “And maybe you aren’t as big a fan of reality as you claim to be.” His breath catches as I follow the line of his neck to the base of his ear and flick his earlobe. “You act like you’re empty inside, but you sure seem alive when you kiss me. I may be innocent but I’m not stupid. If you’re empty, then I don’t know what full is.”
He removes my hand gently, eyes confused and defensive. “Misty, I can’t be what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want. You don’t know my hopes and dreams. You don’t know that up until a few weeks ago I had zero hope of being with someone forever. At least you had a hope of it at one time. You lost it, so what? Move on.”
“Are you saying that because you want me to move on with you?” he asks, a sneer in his voice.
“No, I’m saying that because no one around you thinks you are as dead as you think you are. And if you listen to yourself, here…” I poke him gently in the chest, between his pecs. “Maybe you’d see the same.”
“It doesn’t change things. You don’t understand our world. Fated mates don’t happen twice.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and reach up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Then maybe she wasn’t fated with you.” He jerks back as if hit, and I’m not sure what gave me the audacity to say that.
But I can’t stop thinking of him, and I can’t ignore the way his body responds to me when I touch
him, the catches of breath, the tightening of muscle. The way he comes running like a bat out of hell when I’m in trouble.
The way he pushed me up against the wall in the library back when I barely knew him and told me I’d need him.
Maybe he just wanted me to need him.
“You don’t know anything about her. About us.”
“I could if you told me. But I think I should know, given that her fated mate has been tempted to take me multiple times.” I grin at him, feeling powerful in my truth. Nothing he says about me thinking things are too good to be true can change the fact that I know I’m right.
I know how he looked when he kissed me, on top of me, sheened with sweat, a cocky smile on his face, ready to go.
He lets out a low breath and finally gives me a smile, like he’s surrendering to the ridiculousness of the situation. “I’ll give you this, Misty. It’s a confusing situation, but I don’t intend to confuse either of us any longer. You’re an attractive female, I’m an unmated male, there’s nothing more to it than that.”
I frown and release his hand. “Really?”
“Really,” he says.
Then why have I been thinking about him since I first saw his picture? Why have I been unable to put him out of my mind even when I should hate him for hiding things from me.
But, with the wisdom of some sleep and a little distance, I can understand why he didn’t tell me. For one, he couldn’t. For two, he had to have me acting naturally or the perp might have known we were on to him.
It’s enough that he wanted to tell me the truth.
I still don’t know what to make of him not telling me what his pheromones do, but I do that he planned to protect me no matter what happened.
“So what now?” I ask. “We just stay away from each other?”
He gives me a quiet side glance. “I think that would be best.”
“Screw that,” I say, lunging forward and knocking him to the ground.
Chapter 8
Empty? He doesn’t know a thing about empty. He doesn’t know anything about being so alone that the only people you connect to are on the pages of books. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be so lonely that you have literally no one to call.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to have no family. No matter how emo he felt, he had people who cared. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be alone in the world.
And neither do I, ever since he came into mine and joined me there.
I straddle him as he looks up at me with anger and confusion warring in those golden yellow eyes. He makes like he’s going to sit up and push me off, but being a chubby girl has its benefits and I push him back down and cover his mouth with mine.
He growls, low in his throat, and his hand comes up to grab the back of my head as his tongue pushes into my mouth. Heat explodes between us, our searing physicality an intense contrast with the cold emotional feeling in the room.
But I don’t care right now. I have to try just one more time, to get him to be honest, to see what’s really there between us. Because I don’t know what this fated mates thing is, but if I had to guess, Lindon and I are it. Why else would he make me feel unlike anyone else? Why else would he smell so good?
Maybe we’re both just alphas with extra pheromones, but maybe there’s more to it. I kiss him intently, hands moving through his thick, wiry hair, down his firm chest, his long waist.
He pulls away from me with a groan and puts a hand up to keep me from coming closer. “Damnit, Misty. You’re making it impossible to be honorable.”
“Then don’t be,” I say.
He laughs and then his breath catches as I nip his ear lobe. His hand presses me back again. “Misty, stop. We can’t do this now. It’s just pheromones. We both have to control ourselves.”
“What if I don’t care if I get a mate? What if I’m willing to just have fun with you while helping you catch this murderer?” I ask, knowing that this will hurt my heart, but that I’d rather have a little bit of time with Lindon than no more at all.
“Can you really live with that? Have fun with me and then move on with your life? Are you sure you wouldn’t be devastated?”
“Ha,” I say, sitting up and looking at him with lust in my eyes. “I’m not in love with you, Lindon. But I like kissing you. I like kissing you more than I like kissing anyone else.”
“Kissing anyone else?” he asks, eyes darkening.
I nod, a small grin lighting my face. Maybe I’ve found my in. “Jealous?”
He opens his mouth to reply, then shuts it with an angry snap. “No.”
“Really? Because I can’t decide who was best, after you. Lock was good, nice and soft, but dominant. And Jack, he knows how to use his hands…”
Lindon lets out an angry growl and I gasp as I feel my balance thrown and find myself lying under an angry Lindon, who is now crawling over me with golden eyes. “I’ll kill them.” His eyes glitter as they scan over me.
This is the other Lindon. The one that licked whipped cream out of my mouth, who kissed me after nearly fainting. This Lindon is out to play, and judging from the animalistic gleam in those beautiful, long lashed eyes, his intentions are far from proper.
He yanks down the sleeve of my nightshirt and bites the skin there, grazing me with his teeth as his tongue laves me. He gently sucks, and I gasp, knowing that will make a mark.
“Lindon,” I say, shocked that he would do something that he said the others shouldn’t do. Leave a mark.
“I’ll mark you everywhere,” he growls in a low voice. “I’ll make sure they never touch you. Not ever again.” He kisses along my shoulders to my neck, bites again, sucks again, and then kisses over to my shoulder, leaves another hickey just beneath it and above my breast. “No one should see these, but if they do, they’ll think twice about who’s with you.”
I gasp, trying to slow my breathing as my body gets caught up in the heat and power of him, his hands moving under my shirt to graze my thighs, his lips searing mine as he takes them again and pressing his long body fully against mine.
Oh gosh, kissing Lindon. It’s sure to result in an argument later, and it’s definitely not what we should be doing, but boy does it feel more amazing than anything I’ve ever experienced.
And it’s amazing to see sweat beading on his beautiful, tanned skin, anger and concentration and heat in his features as he looks for the next way to convince me and himself that I’m his.
I’m tempted to remind him that he doesn’t want to be my mate, and as such, jealousy shouldn’t really set him off like that. But I guess it always has.
I dig my nails into his strong back as he goes deep in my mouth. The first time he kissed me, after that night where I kissed Jack and Lock. The second time after I’d kissed Bradley.
“Lindon,” I say breathlessly, pulling away with a gasp. He gives me an impatient glare and sits back on his knees. He’s so tall, even with that. I just wish this big man wasn’t so conflicted. “If you don’t want me as a mate, you can’t be upset if others do.”
His eyes shutter. “I know that.”
I reach up for his hair and stroke a lock to the side. “So it’s fine if we just have fun like this, but you can’t ruin things for me with other men.”
“The hell I can’t,” he says, nipping my ear. “I’ll tell you what my pheromones do, Misty.”
“What?” I gasp, as he bites down and sucks the sensitive lobe through his teeth.
“Repel other males.”
I try to sit up but he presses me back down easily with one hand. “Oh no, Misty. You’re the one who wanted this. You pushed me to the fucking ground. So now let me tell you exactly what you’re getting.” He inhales the air around him. “See that? The air changes. When I’m with you, I suppress your scent. For a certain amount of time after, I know no one will come on to you. And when they do, it won’t be as intense. It’s another reason Rowan sent me. One of my scent powers is that my scent can overpower almost any.”
&nbs
p; He shakes his head. “I swore I wouldn’t use any, that I wouldn’t interfere. But every time I could…smell them on you…I went crazy. I couldn’t control myself. And just as I realize it’s unfair to you, am determined to pull back, you pull me in. So you got me.”
I gasp as his hand digs into my side, his thumb caressing my panty line.
“But you don’t get to say what happens as a result of that. So take me, but only if you don’t mind the fact that I want to keep every other man fucking off of you, even when I can’t have you for myself. I’m selfish, Misty. Selfish and awful.”
I blink up at him, stunned to silence. If he’s selfish and awful, then why did that whole rant turn me on?
Because he wants you, a small voice says inside me. And you want him.
His gold eyes glare down at me. “That’s right, do you hate me now? The truth is out. I want you, and I hate myself for it. Because I know it can only hurt both of us. And I kissed you, even knowing it would mark you. I knew you’d have to choose one of them, but I didn’t want you to.” He gives me a triumphant glare. “There, now you know my secrets.” He eyes something behind me. “Well, except one. I did write that stupid book. I wrote it when I was fifteen and Ava was sick and I was imagining a happy ending that we’d never have. I stayed in a fever dream, so romantic and overdramatic. And when she died, the romance in me died too.”
I simply look up at him sadly, heart breaking for him. I’ve read those scenes over and over, and knowing he is the heart behind them makes them that much more devastating.
And it makes me that much less willing to give up on him or walk away. It makes a lot of sense now, why he wouldn’t want to move on, whether he and Ava were fated or not. That’s so much to go through. After losing someone that way, I wouldn’t want to love again either.
He mistakes my expression for scorn. “So go ahead, hate me. Hate me for being weak, for betraying Ava, and for lying to you. Hate me for wanting to take you now when I know you can never be mine. Hate me for the truth.” He closes his eyes for a moment against the pain. “It’s better than being hated for a lie.”
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