Page 34 of Empire of Light

His fingertips curled into the hair at the base of my neck. “What is this between us?”

My question exactly. I smiled, not looking up at him. “Your son said you were obsessed with me.”

“I heard.”

Of course he did.

I angled my head so I could study his face, my fingers reaching up to dust along the stubble lining his jaw. “You didn’t admit to it.”

“To hearing it or to being it?”

“Both. Either.”

He shrugged. “Leo isn’t wrong in his assessment.”

My eyes opened wide. “You’re admitting to it?”

Damen always had been acutely aware of himself. He’d had to be, for that was how he controlled things—know thy own weaknesses first.

His look skittered about my face, taking in every last line of my amusement and the smallest smile came to his lips. “My obsession? Yes. I’m obsessed with you for a lot of reasons. Good and bad. Does it drive this thing between us? Most likely. Unless you have a better answer?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what this is between us—whether it should even exist or not. There are moments when it is undeniably right. And there are moments when it is undeniably wrong.”

He puffed out a singular chuckle. “That hasn’t changed in you.”

“What?”

“You’re entirely too real—too honest with me.”

“I should be lying?”

“No. Your honesty—your lack of subterfuge—was one of the things that I have always particularly admired about you.”

I held my breath for a long moment, exhaling it slowly as I contemplated what I could tell him. What I wanted to tell him.

I shifted on top of him, dragging my right hand under my chin to prop my head up and I searched out his eyes. They were glowing amber in the scant light from his bedside lamp. He stared back at me, and I could see it—vibrant in his eyes as much as he voiced it—he was flummoxed at what to do with us.

Join the party.

My left fingers crawled up along his chest, settling along the sharp line of his collarbone. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to get honesty from me for I didn’t know any other way to be with him. “I am terrified of you, Damen. But I am also terrified of never having this—us—again.”

His jaw ticked a beat, like he didn’t like my statement, but he was also desperate for my honesty and that appeared to win out. “Which sentiment is stronger?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t even flinch at my words, his stare eating into me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ada. At least not in the way of Cletus getting his slimy hands on you ever again. That, I will never allow to happen.”

My heart thudded hard against my ribcage. I believed him on the Cletus score. He’d been holding that threat over my head to torture me, to punish me. But now that particular punishment was over. “But you’ll hurt me in other ways?”

“Undoubtedly.”

I frowned. “Have you become a fucking eight-ball? What does that mean?”

His head tilted back on the floor, his look going to the ceiling for several long breaths before dropping back to me. Agony and fury and yearning spun together in a web of turmoil in his eyes. Agonizing chaos he was allowing me to see tearing him to shreds.

“It means I’ve wanted to kill you, Ada. I’ve wanted to make you suffer a thousand times over for what you did to me.”

I nodded, my head turning and dropping back down onto his chest. I couldn’t take his stare.