The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,28

me for reading your thoughts. You practically screamed that one at me.”

I sighed, and it was a while before I spoke my current innermost fear. “It was just a nightmare, Luc. And maybe some repressed memories coming through.” Definitely some repressed memories, but whatever. “Could this happen anytime I go to sleep? What if this is something I just can’t control?”

“What if you can’t? Does that mean you’d rather just not do anything?”

I frowned. “No. But you can’t take the Source from me every time I lose it. I don’t want you turning into Robotic Luc—”

“But what if it’s Horny Robotic Luc?”

“Oh my God,” I moaned.

He chuckled again, and God, I was happy to hear it even though he was doing his level best to embarrass me. “We do it someplace safer. There are a lot of fields and abandoned areas where if you have to let it out, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? What about you getting hurt?”

“I won’t get hurt.”

I cocked my head to the side again. “I’m going to remind you what Robotic Luc said. That you were wrong about being invincible.”

“Besides the fact I’d be prepared for you to blow and will be able to take precautions, it’ll take more than a building or two coming down on me to do any damage.”

A building or two?

I really had no words for that.

But I had other words. “And if I go super-villain? The way you talked about my power.” I looked away. “You made it sound like you knew I could take you.”

“Evie? I don’t know if you realize this or not, but from the moment everything went down in those woods, I knew you could take me out if you really wanted to. I wouldn’t make it easy, but that’s a fight you’d win.”

I already knew that, but hearing Luc confirm it was frightening.

Now, if I could control it, it would be pretty badass, but until then? It was terrifying to know I could lose control and kill the person I loved with every bit of me.

“And that doesn’t bother you? At all?”

“Honestly?” He rolled me onto my back, and even after what we just shared, I folded an arm over my chest. “I actually find it really hot. Like, I was a little turned on when you were peeling my skin off my bones.”

Um …

“Yeah, that might be TMI, but look, it would be nice if someone else could take care of the bad guys while I got caught up on Jersey Shore.”

I stared at his shadowed face. “Are you being serious? Because I can’t tell. I hope you’re not, but all of that sounds like something idiotic that you’d really mean.”

His palm came to rest on my stomach, just below my navel. “Half of that was true. Well, ninety percent of it was. I think Jersey Shore is highly underrated.”

Every time I was struck speechless, honest to God, I didn’t think he could shock me into silence again. Each time I was completely wrong.

“But I won’t let it get to the point where my life or yours is in jeopardy,” he went on. “I will stop it before it gets to that.”

“How? You going to keep sucking the power out of me?”

Tracing his finger around my belly button, he was quiet for several long moments. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

Unnerved, I asked, “Why?”

“I’m the only Origin that can do that—well, I’m the only Origin alive that can. In a way, it’s similar to how an Arum feeds off the Source and how it heightens existing strengths and abilities, but it’s not the same.” He was drawing an invisibly squiggly line now. “Now I know why you refer to it as ‘it’ or something other in you,” he said. “The Source felt like a separate entity.”

“It doesn’t normally feel like that?”

“It feels like an intricate part of me. What came out of you felt different. Maybe it’s because I was engineered from birth. I don’t think it’s like that with hybrids, either. Probably because they have a Luxen to anchor the mutation. Maybe it feels that way because it’s in you, but you’re not really a part of it, at least intentionally? Each time you’ve used it, it was forced upon you, either by physical threat or emotional distress. Maybe that will change as you grow more accustomed to it. I don’t know. Either way, I’ve never felt anything like that before.” His voice grew quieter. “That kind of power?