Savage Craving - Cecilia Lane Page 0,43
her veins. Pacing helped. The movement burned off some of the agitation, but a fresh swell rolled over her the moment she paused.
His eyes followed her every step, which frustrated her even more. The attention weighed on her, stroked over her. She wanted to preen under it and add an extra sway of her hips as much as she wanted to tell him to get the hell away and leave her alone.
It wasn’t right that he was the one to follow her away from the gathering. Oh, he was her bodyguard, sure. But he’d also kissed her and held her through the night, then pushed her away and held tight to his own secrets.
“Then there’s you,” Lilah snapped. Still pacing, she waved a hand in Seth’s general direction. “I don’t even know what you are.”
“I’m shiftless.”
She stopped pacing and wheeled around. “You’re what?” she asked with a shake of her head, brows shooting together. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Seth answered with a small step forward, “my parents were shifters, but I’m not. I have the senses. I’m just as strong, I can see just as well. Hear, smell, all the benefits without having an animal under my skin.”
There it was. Lilah raised a hand to her mouth. After all the denials, after telling her she was seeing things, the words slipped right out. The bomb dropped between them. The fuse lit and burned. The vindication felt like a betrayal.
“You lied to me?” She added a step between them. Another brought her back against the wall. Hurt curdled in her middle, spoiling the contents and making her sick. “This whole time, you lied?”
“Not a lie,” he insisted. “I’ve never shifted in my life.”
The earnest plea to be believed kept her from snapping about technicalities and omissions.
“Can we go inside and talk? Please?” He rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart. “I... feel it more around you, and I can’t stand to see you so worked up.”
“You feel it? You mean your animal?” She let her head fall back and muttered at the rafters above her, “Just call me a freaking shifter-whisperer.”
“I’d say more of a magnet. Or cursed. You may have been right about that.”
Lilah fixed him with a glare that only deepened when his lips twitched with a barely contained smile. “That’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. Also fixable, unlike an innate talent to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, we’ll have to get the fae involved. Who knows what monkey’s paw bullshit will come of that. No more curse, but now you’re plagued with bunions.”
“Seth!” she groaned.
He reached for her hand and gave her a gentle pull. “Come inside with me, Lilah. We can talk about it if you want, or we can sit in silence. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be pulled into his room. After the liveliness of Hailey's den, the bare walls and empty flat surfaces made her stomach sink. How much of himself did he hide away from the others? From himself? He'd lived there for months, she'd gathered, and yet not a single personal belonging beyond the necessities filled the space.
It was like he didn’t want to get attached, which was something she understood all too well. There wasn’t any getting hurt if everyone was kept at bay.
“Will you tell me what he did? I’d rather not punch the man without a true accounting of his crimes.”
Seth shut the door behind them, then stayed standing against the door. Not blocking her, she thought, just giving her first pick of the battleground.
Lilah eyed the bed, then took a seat at the two-person table. “Not a man, though. He’s a shifter. Bear, to be specific.”
“How do you know him?” Seth pushed off the door and took the seat opposite her.
He tried to catch her eyes, but she turned her face away and stared into the middle distance. She didn’t owe him her life story.
Except he had saved her life. And Hailey included him among the good ones.
Lilah slid her eyes closed. Everything would be so much simpler if he was an asshole who barked orders. She could ignore those and enthusiastically wave goodbye when they parted ways. What she couldn’t ignore was a decent, caring man who called his mother every weekend. That man immediately jumped to her defense at the hint of danger and pleaded with her to know what was wrong. Even her flimsy excuse of secret for secret