Tarot Academy 4 - Sarah Piper Page 0,19

to be pissed off at the world, to push away all the people who care about you, to punish yourself over a past you didn’t cause and damn well can’t change. Because after tonight? This game between us is over. It’s time to face the truth—you don’t want to be alone. Not tonight. Not ever.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grinds out. “And I suggest you take that righteous attitude and leave before you say something you—”

“Something I what—regret?” I let out a bitter laugh, the tension between us seconds from sparking into a full-on inferno. “Not a chance, Doc. You know why? Because saying things—even harsh, ugly things—isn’t the problem. It’s the not saying things that keeps fucking us all up. So I’m saying all of it tonight. Laying it right out there.”

“Save your breath,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut as if he can make me disappear. “I told you—I want to be alone.”

“Bullshit. Look—I’m not trying to minimize what happened to Elizabeth, or to tell you how you should feel about it. I’m just saying we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, we’ve all fucked up, we’ve all destroyed lives and broken hearts and caused more pain than we could ever bear ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get to love. To be loved.”

I reach for his arm, and though he turns to face me, he doesn’t open his eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest, his jaw set tight, brows drawn low. Everything about him screams back off.

But I don’t. I can’t.

“Your past,” I say, “your oaths, all the things you’ve broken, all the things that’ve broken you… None of them matter to me. And none of them change how you feel about me, either.”

He finally opens his eyes again, fury and frustration colliding in his gaze, his body practically vibrating with it. “You presume to know how I feel about you?”

My heart stutters at the quiet menace in his voice, but I refuse to back down.

“I can feel it,” I say, pressing a hand to my chest. “Right here. Every time you look at me. Every time you say my name. All the rest—the darkness, the fear, the boundaries? It’s all some story you keep telling yourself so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re falling in love with me. That I’m falling in love with you. And you keep pushing me away because deep down, you don’t believe you deserve any of it. So yeah, I’ll leave you tonight. Fine. But I’m still calling you a liar, Dr. Devane. A scared, angry, control-freak of a liar.”

I turn on my heel, stalk across the room, and reach for the door. I’ve just opened it a sliver when it slams shut again, Doc’s hands flat against the wood, his arms a cage around my head. Behind me, the solid wall of his chest leaves no escape.

He leans in closer and crowds me against the door, breath hot on my neck, his steel-hard cock digging into my lower back.

“You’re right, Miss Milan,” he says in that eerily quiet voice. “I am a liar. The worst kind. Because this isn’t just about the oaths I made after Copenhagen. I’ve been making oaths from the very moment I found you in that prison. Promises to keep you safe—not just from the guards, not just from the dark mages that attacked your friend Luke, not just from the unknown dangers awaiting you at the Academy. No. I promised to protect you from me—the poisonous viper lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to strike.”

I turn around inside the cage of his arms, ready to fight to the death over that particular bit of bullshit, but Doc presses a finger to my lips, immediately cutting me off. His eyes are full of new dangers now, promises and threats and everything in between, and my pulse skyrockets, my blood superheated, my body suddenly desperate for more of his commanding touch.

“From the moment I first laid eyes on you,” he says, one hand still braced against the door, “strong and defiant even in your worst moments, I felt it. The tide of you, pulling me close. You seduced me in ways I couldn’t explain, couldn’t define. But I swore to keep my distance, no matter how difficult. I swore I wouldn’t—under any circumstances—touch you. Not even if you begged me for it.”

He trails his fingertip down my chin, my throat, swirling over the triangle of