I almost purred at the taste of him against my lips too, but I didn’t.
Something was wrong, which was quite clear with the way he was holding me, but I wasn’t really in a position to move.
One of my arms was around his neck though, and yup, I had pins and needles too.
Ouch. But I ignored the discomfort of the limb coming back online, and instead, squeezed him, trying to comfort him, even though I wasn’t sure why he needed comforting.
Unless…
Had he thought I was going to die?
I supposed it had been a possibility, and while I had no faith in the Mother or her will, I felt certain that we might leave this mating circle we were in with a missing limb but our lives intact.
Just, at any rate.
She was putting us through our paces, giving us things she didn’t think we could handle on our own, making us evolve to her pace, not ours.
I’d be pissed about that, if I didn’t feel so fucking empowered.
And hell, that was an understatement.
I didn’t feel just fucking empowered.
I felt phenomenal.
Like I could do anything, take on the goddamn world, and show them my ass, wiggle it, then give a sweet ‘fuck you’ to anyone who disapproved.
For someone like me, someone who’d been on the run all her life, someone who’d been a victim, these emotions were almost an aphrodisiac.
Maybe later, I’d want to cry about how great I felt. Now?
I just wanted to understand what was going on with my man.
It figured that he was the strong and silent type.
Not exactly helpful when I was trying to figure out what was wrong with him.
Sighing, I rubbed my nose against his chest, hoping that would soothe him.
His head tipped down, and his forehead bumped my temple softly.
His breath whispered over my cheek, along the lobe of my ear. Sensation shot through me, but I dampened it down.
Tempered it, because he was still seeking comfort.
I strained to hear his thoughts, but wasn’t altogether surprised when they weren’t there.
Was that the issue?
I thought about how to resolve that, because with Eli and Austin, each time had been different. Just claiming Austin had connected him to me, but with Eli, only when I’d shifted had I been able to hear his thoughts. So for Ethan, I had no solution.
Which sucked.
So, because I didn’t know what to do or what to say, I sighed and just hugged him as much as I could in the twisted embrace I was sitting in.
The scent of desperation escaped his pores, and it was so powerful, I had no alternative but to whisper, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“The truth is hard to hear,” he rasped, making me tense in his arms.
The truth was always the hardest option, in my honest opinion. No one ever said that the truth didn’t hurt.
“I can take whatever it is you’re feeling.”
He sighed, his breath making my hair gust a little, and as the ends tickled my skin, prompting me to shiver, he tucked me tighter into him and murmured, “It’s better now.”
When he squeezed me, I figured out why.
Because I was awake.
Plus, Austin?
While he was the more ebullient of the two twins, he also hadn’t had to deal with Ethan’s almost death as well as my almost death too.
Shit.
If anything could have prompted me to move, to shift out of the odd position I was in, it was that. I scrambled, shoving away from his hold until I could straddle him, until my arms could slip around him and I could embrace him with my entire body.
The second he understood what I was doing, sensed that I wasn’t trying to get away from him, he squeezed me back.
“I’m sorry.”
My words had him tensing. “Why on Earth would you be sorry? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’ve brought chaos—”
“Fuck chaos. Fuck it in the ass.”
His statement had me snorting, but it was his vehemence that made me pull back to peer at him so I could giggle up at him.
“Fuck it in the ass, huh?”
His grin was slow in coming, and when it did, it was sheepish as hell, but that didn’t stop it from making an appearance. Kali Sara, it was better than the sun coming out in this place’s endless twilight.
I wanted to bathe in the rays of that smile.
Wanted to dance in it, for God’s sake.
Something about my most serious mate smiling at me, playfully, his words nearly a joke in themselves, hit me