guessed it might. Then he said, “I want you more than I should.”
The corner of her lips tugged up. “I already know that.” To emphasize her point, she squeezed her legs tighter around his waist, highlighting their position. “Try again.”
Jaxor sighed, the sound whistling out of him. Finally, he said, “I have a blood brother. He still resides in the Golden City.”
Erin’s brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t you want me to know that?”
“Because…” he trailed off and then said, “Because most of my lifespan, I have been envious of him. He is more intelligent than I. He is a better warrior than I. He is loved more than I.”
His gaze found hers and Erin’s lips pressed together, her chest aching more, when she saw the shame there. And now she realized why he didn’t want her to know. Because it made him ashamed to envy his brother, to want the things that he had.
Sympathy rose in her chest. Because she knew what it felt like.
“Like what happened with Sarcalla?” Erin asked gently. His first love had turned her back on him and tried to pursue Jaxor’s brother. That would cause ripples between them, surely.
“Tev,” Jaxor said. “He was angry for me, angry at her for what happened, but it did not stop me from feeling…cast aside. But there were many moments like that when we were younger. He was one of the reasons why I left the Golden City when I did. It became difficult to look him in the eye, feeling the way I did. It was a cowardly thing to do, but I cannot change what happened between us.”
His arms shifted and the water trickled off his forearms. When silence stretched between them, he filled it by smoothing his lathered hands over her body, washing her, as if they’d done this a million times before.
A distraction, perhaps, but Erin wouldn’t let him get away with it. “Would you mend what happened between you if you could?”
He hesitated, but then he gave a slight incline of his head. “Tev. I would.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He ran one of his sudsy hands over his horn, something he did when he was nervous or frustrated, she realized. One of his tells. “It is complicated.”
“It always is,” she said softly, though affection bloomed in her chest, watching soap drip from his horn onto his cheek.
She’d never thought she would feel affection for someone as broody and closed off as Jaxor, but perhaps that was just a type of armor for him. Perhaps there were many, many sides to him, just like there were to her.
“I know what you feel,” she said softly, wiping away the soap.
His brow furrowed. “Rebax?”
“I have two younger siblings and sometimes I was very jealous of them, though it’s a terrible thing to feel about those you love, isn’t it?”
She was tempted to look away, but she watched him steadily, despite her fear and her need to retreat whenever she spoke of her family and every ugly little crevice within it.
“I never knew my father, but my mother remarried when I was young. And when I was five, she gave birth to Jake and Ellora. Twins. My brother and sister,” she told him. “But their father was violent, just because he wanted to be. He would abuse my mother.”
His claws pricked her when they curled. She sensed his muscles bunching, as intertwined as they were. “Did he ever hurt you?”
“No, only her,” she said, swallowing. “He left us shortly after the twins were born. And shortly after that, my mother began to…pull away from us. She was depressed and liked her pills—any pills, really—a little too much. I was six or seven when that began happening. She would sleep all day, missing work. There would be no food in the cabinets because she’d forgotten to go shopping or because she couldn’t afford it. All the while, the twins were so young.”
“You were so young, rixella,” he rasped.
“Yes,” she whispered, conjuring a small, sad smile. “I just remember them crying all the time. I remember hating them because they made so much noise, all while loving them because they would smile up at me when they weren’t crying.”
“Vrax,” he murmured, looking away from her momentarily, shaking his head.
“I had to take care of them because my mother wasn’t doing enough for all of us. Because their father wasn’t around. And that continued until I was eighteen-years-old, the legal age of an adult where I lived. And then I fought for custody