Bound by Forever - (True Immortality #3) Page 0,103
me about it.”
Niamh turned her head to look at him.
Kiyo smirked. “I’ve got some time on my hands. And I want to know about you.”
Tenderness flooded her and she realized with some discomfort that the wolf could probably talk her into doing anything.
“It was difficult to make connections,” Niamh told him. “Being what I was and always on the run. But it was more than that.” She looked back at the ceiling as she finally admitted, “My brother was a bit suffocating. While he gallivanted all over the place, screwing gorgeous strangers, men and women he picked up in bars and bistros and museums … I wasn’t allowed to have that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Ronan used to say it was for my own protection. I let myself believe him. The truth was, he was afraid. Not just of me being found out, but that the life he’d come to love—no matter how much he complained about it—would be taken from him if I met someone. Ultimately, however, I think he was just afraid to lose me. He loved me. I was the only family he had. And he didn’t want me to love anyone but him.”
“That’s messed up.”
Niamh looked at Kiyo and saw his indignation on her behalf. “I know. But in the end, he did die trying to protect me.”
Kiyo’s expression softened. “Yeah.”
Silence fell between them.
Then he asked, “So there was no one? Ever?”
Blood warmed her cheeks as she remembered Matteo. “There was an Italian.” She grinned. “We stayed in Lake Como for a month. And there was this boy from Rome staying at his family’s vacation home in the hills. He took a liking to me and wasn’t at all put off by Ronan.”
“What age were you?”
“Nineteen. He was a few years older, in his last year at uni.” Niamh looked at Kiyo and found him patiently waiting for her to continue. “Ronan liked women and men who were already in a relationship. He didn’t have to worry about them getting clingy. Well, most of the time. He’d started sleeping around with a man who had a wife and kids. We argued about it a lot. But I was always too afraid to push him because I felt I owed him.”
“Messed up,” Kiyo repeated.
Niamh exhaled slowly. “So he was off with this married man, and I snuck out to see Matteo. Thinking Ronan wouldn’t be back for hours, I took Matteo to the hotel room. I wanted to know,” she whispered, feeling her body heat at the memory, not of Matteo’s touch but of Kiyo’s. “I wanted to know what it was like. I let him undress me and touch—”
“I don’t need the details.”
Trying not to be delighted by the jealousy Kiyo couldn’t hide, Niamh smothered her smile. “No details. Other than to say he was just about to make home base when Ronan burst into the hotel room. They got into a massive fight and Ronan and I had to leave.”
Melancholy fell over her at the memory.
She didn’t want to remember her brother like that.
“He stopped you from living.”
“He kept me on mission,” she argued.
Cool fingers curled around her hand and Niamh turned back to Kiyo. His look was one of compassion mingled with frustration. “He kept you from living.”
Niamh shrugged, her lips trembling with grief. “But he helped me survive.”
Kiyo squeezed his eyes closed as if he felt her pain. His hand gripped hers. “There’s more to life than just surviving. You reminded me of that.”
Emotion swelled hot and thick between them, and hope glimmered in the depths of Niamh’s heart.
“Tell me something good about him. A good memory?” Kiyo asked, as if he knew she needed the balance from remembrance.
She searched her memories. “There are so many. How he’d hold me when I had a vision, even though the older and stronger I got, it was really difficult for him to contain me. Sometimes I left bruises,” she remembered in remorse. “I told him not to hold me through it, but he said he couldn’t see me like that. That he needed to be there to comfort me.
“I think that’s one of the things about him I miss most.” She struggled against her grief. “Knowing he was there to shield me when I was vulnerable.” She chuckled at a thought. “And his sense of humor. Ronan had the most wicked sense of humor. Completely politically incorrect but in a world gone PC mad, he was refreshing. He’d crack me up in the most inappropriate places.