Vivid Avowed (Evelyn Maynard Trilogy #3) - Kaydence Snow Page 0,84

frustrated anger and sometimes from pure, scorching lust. He was looking at me as if I were the only person in the room.

Slowly, he lifted his hand from the arm of the couch and crooked his finger, beckoning me over. I bristled at being summoned like that even as my body began to respond. Ethan released his hold, pushed me up, even nudged me in Alec’s direction. After a few wobbly steps, I stood in front of him.

He wrapped his strong hands around my waist and pulled me between his legs. I had an urge to lift one knee, then the other, and straddle him, but before I could, he lifted me up, wincing slightly at the pain from his wound, and deposited me in Tyler’s lap.

Tyler circled his arms around me, drew me into his chest, and with a gentle hand at my cheek, made me look into his serious gray eyes. “Do I need to kick everyone out of this room so I can show you how much I want you and no one else?” he murmured against my lips.

What was I thinking? This was my Bonded Variant. I was his Vital! Nothing could ever compete with that; nothing could break that connection. Alec and I had tried to resist it. It was impossible.

My paranoid insecurity melted away, and I shook my head. “No, let’s keep playing.”

I smiled and he nodded, his ability confirming the truth of my feelings. He placed a searing kiss on my lips but didn’t open his mouth to me when I darted my tongue out. It left me wanting as he raised his voice and asked whose turn it was.

As the night progressed and the game continued, most of us got more and more drunk. At one point, Dot and Charlie ganged up on me, apparently determined to see me get wasted, as they fired off statements like “Never have I ever falsified identification documents,” “Never have I ever lied about my identity,” and “Never have I ever tried to run away from my Bond because I thought they were out to get me.”

I threw them dirty looks over the rim of my glass while fighting giddy laughter.

At some point, well past midnight, we all started to disperse. Dot and Charlie’s plan had worked—I was well and truly drunk off my ass. I only vaguely registered Alec guiding me up the hall toward his room, the sharp pain in my hip as I barreled into a side table, Alec’s grunt as he picked me up and carried me the rest of the way.

As he wrangled me out of my clothes, I blabbered on in half-finished sentences. “ . . . evil Dot and Charlie ganging up on me . . . I love them. They’re so nice. They’re like my family now . . . They are my family . . . Everyone is my family.” I giggled, stumbling backward, but Alec caught me and lowered me to the bed. He kept me sitting upright so he could pull one of his soft T-shirts over my head.

I inhaled. “You smell good. This is a really soft T-shirt. Why are all your things so soft? What was I . . . oh yeah! The whole world is my family. You know, we need more love in all the . . . um . . . in the . . . the world needs more love. I love Dot and Charlie and everyone else. I have so much love.”

I grabbed on to the front of his shirt and pulled him down to eye level. My vision was swimming, but he looked as if he was smirking at me, amused. I steadied my swaying as best I could, blinked a few times, then said in an intense whisper, “I have so much love in my heart, Alec, for all of you.”

His smile fell, but he kept staring at me with those intense eyes of his, dark blue in the low light of the bedside lamp. “So do I,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to mine.

I smiled and nuzzled his nose. The last coherent sliver of my brain—the only little bit not swimming in alcohol—managed to stop me from saying, “I love you.” I didn’t want to say it to him drunk. It felt cheap and fake, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to doubt me.

My eyes widened and I leaned away, my hands flying to my stomach as my mouth filled with saliva.

“Oh