left to hide behind.”
They stood silent for a long moment, each studying the other with all walls removed, barriers knocked down. He knew what she was and now she knew the full story about him.
As different as they were, she realized they were alike. Two people—or whatever they were—isolated by their very nature. Darby could relate to him.
The air suddenly altered, became something thick, tension swirling around them so dense she could swim in it. Her throat constricted and she fought to swallow. In that moment, if she had wanted to speak she couldn’t have.
His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm, still resting there. Everything flooded back to her then. Everything. Their kiss, long and deep and smoldering. His heat, his taste. Her need and hunger for more of him. For all of him.
She’d thought he’d growled during that kiss, and now she guessed that he probably had. And still that didn’t bother her. A tremor of excitement raced up her spine.
His gaze slid up from her hand on his arm then. She fell into his gaze. That twisting flame of light was back in his indigo eyes. “You might not want to do that,” he rasped.
“What?”
“Touch me.”
“Oh.” Her hand slipped from his arm. She rubbed her fingertips together at her sides. They felt bereft, cold on the air.
“I didn’t open up to you and tell you about myself because I wanted your pity or soft looks. I especially wasn’t trying to get you to pet me like I’m some sort of puppy—”
“I wasn’t doing that,” she said hotly, scanning his six-feet-plus hard body. The last thing he reminded her of was a puppy.
“I told you the truth about me, about my mother, because you deserve to know. If we’re in this together for the next month, then you should know all the factors.”
His eyes were so cold, fathomless deep and impossible to read. The light inside them had vanished.
He spoke with such practicality. Like they were entering into some kind of business arrangement. There was nothing sentimental or friendly about his words. As much as she’d held herself from the world, something told her Niklas was an even harder case.
Not too comforting to consider, when she and Aimee would be in close quarters with him for the next month.
But they wouldn’t be with him, she reminded herself. Not really. This was strictly a mission with no emotion involved. He wasn’t invested like she was in saving Aimee’s life. A fact she should remember so she didn’t make any more overtures of friendship and embarrass herself by touching him again—by wanting and craving to touch him again. Another motive drove him and it had nothing to do with her. This was about his mother. About him.
“I appreciate you telling me everything.” She nodded, trying to look unaffected, as cool and remote as he was. “You’re right. We’re in this together.”
She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it all. She wondered about his mother. Thoughts of her must plague him, haunt him every day. She shivered at the thought of what he must endure, the agony of living with the knowledge that his mother sacrificed her life—her very soul—for him.
As much as the memory of her mother’s death haunted her, Darby at least knew she was dead. He didn’t have that peace. Was his mother even still a demon witch? Or was she dead now? Her soul forever lost for consorting with a demon?
Once a white witch entered into contract with a demon, she gained immortality. She lived forever at the mercy of her demon’s whims.
Had his mother’s demon somehow managed to bring about her death? Because that’s what they did—tricky bastards. There was only one way a demon witch could be killed. Decapitation. Take the head and the demon was free to roam the earth in corporeal form. What every demon wanted. That was their ultimate goal.
He still watched her with his cold gaze, and she guessed he had good reason to be so cool and aloof. What happened to him could break anyone.
A small, mewling sound carried from the other room.
Niklas nodded in that direction. “The child. She’s begun the transition.”
“Her name is Aimee,” she said. He could at least call her something besides the child.
He stared right through her like she hadn’t said anything. “You may want to go to her. She’ll be very uncomfortable. At least until it ends and she wakes.”
Darby looked over her shoulder, peering into her dimly lit room. “What can