Omens (The Dark in You #6) - Suzanne Wright Page 0,70
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“Want to tell me who Thea is?”
No, he really didn’t. “It’s complicated.”
Khloé’s scalp prickled. If he’d said something like, “Just some woman who wants to get in my pants,” Khloé would have been pissed, but she wouldn’t have demanded more info. He was an incubus; he’d always have women wanting to get in his pants, which meant Khloé would be delivering bitch slaps for years to come. But hearing the words “it’s complicated” made unease churn in her belly.
She stepped back. “If a guy came knocking at my door, asking to come inside, you’d—”
“Beat the shit out of him so he didn’t repeat that mistake.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’d want to know who he was, so don’t be a hypocrite and blow me off. Look, it’s not that I expect you to answer to me. You’re a grown man. You don’t have to tell me your every secret. But if there’s a woman sniffing around you and the situation is ‘complicated,’ I’m going to want to know about it. So give me something.” Or she’d walk. She would. She needed to be able to trust that he’d be upfront when it counted.
Sighing, he crossed to the sofa and sank onto it. “All right.” He patted his thighs. “Come sit here and I’ll tell you about her.”
Khloé frowned. He looked so tired all of a sudden, and she sensed that this conversation might take a lot out of him. She considered letting him off the hook and saying it didn’t matter, but it did matter. Her demon, pissed that another woman would come here, wasn’t going to let it go. So Khloé did as he asked and settled her hands on his chest.
He cupped her hips and pulled her closer. “That’s better.” He slid his hands up her back. “You know that me, Knox, and the sentinels spent most of our childhood at an orphanage for demonic children, right?”
She nodded. “Yes.” She’d heard enough about the place to know it had been a hellhole, and she admired them all for surviving it.
“Thea was there, too. I cared about her, and she claimed to care for me. But she refused to come with us when we left—she wanted to go her own way; didn’t want to belong to a lair again. She didn’t have great experiences with those. Plus, having spent so long under the control of militant staff, she needed to feel free. Needed to make her own decisions and not answer to anyone, which I can understand. She asked me to go with her, but I wouldn’t. I needed to feel grounded just as much as she needed to feel unbound.”
Getting it, Khloé nodded again and moved her hands to his shoulders.
“She’d turn up now and then,” Keenan went on. “Every few years or so. She’d always give me the same spiel—she was ready to settle down now, to put down some roots, to try ‘lair-life,’ as she called it. But a few weeks would go by, and then she’d be gone again. She never said goodbye, never even left a note. She’d just disappear.”
Khloé’s lips parted. “That’s fucking cowardly, not to mention a total bitch-move.”
“I’d call her on it the next time she showed up, and she’d always say the same thing—she found goodbyes too hard. She’d also always claim it wouldn’t happen again; that she was back for good this time. I bought it, because I wanted to. I don’t like to give up on people, and I hated that she seemed to have given up on herself, so I gave her more chances than I should have.”
“What made you stop giving her chances?”
He slipped his hands under Khloé’s tee and splayed them on her back. “When she turned up at my doorstep nine years ago, I’d already decided I was done—I’d accepted that she wasn’t going to change. I was also involved with someone at the time. It was just a fling, nothing serious. But it was exclusive.
“Thea cried. Claimed to love me. Claimed she really meant to stay with me. She made me all kinds of promises, and she may have even meant them for a short time. Or maybe she just didn’t like that I was involved with another woman and wanted to be sure I ended it.” He sighed. “I should have known better than to buy her bullshit.”
“She disappeared again?”
“Yes. And then I was officially done. My demon had already given up on her long before that, so it