Realm Walker

tied to him. He may have hurt her when he left, but every day that went by without her reaching out to him had killed a little piece of him. He’d stayed away until he could bear it no longer and now that he’d returned she never ceased to remind him that she didn’t need him. Didn’t want him.

Finally she turned to face him and crossed her arms over her chest like a shield. “So why did you?”

“You wanted time. You asked for space. I gave it to you. I gave it to you in spades.” It had become a familiar refrain over the years and was far better than admitting the power she held over him. The power she could use against him.

“I was twenty years old. I hadn’t even had a day to adjust to the idea of us yet and you were talking about presenting me to the Council. About my new position in the coven. I was scared.”

Scared didn’t begin to cover it. She’d been terrified, the emotion so heavy in the air that day, it had been a palpable thing. That’s when he realized what he’d taken from her with his own selfish desire to have her tied to him for an eternity. When she asked for time, it gave him the opening he needed to give her a chance to live her life without him in it. Even if only temporarily.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath then looked at him again. “You left me. You took everything from me.”

“I left everything for you. My money, my home, my coven. It’s all yours. It always has been.” He pushed both hands through his hair. “I gave you what you wanted. As much as it killed me to do it, I gave it to you. I only wanted you to be happy.”

“Yeah, my life’s been a regular carnival.” She sighed. “You just left me, Thomas. You left all of us. They assumed I was no longer under your protection. I assumed that. You left me alone under the authority of a vampire who resented my connection to you from the moment you brought me into the coven. There was no protection there for me. No home.”

“Always with the damn secrets,” he snapped. He took a moment to tamp down his temper before continuing. “What happened, Joya? What aren’t you telling me?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Thomas. Not anymore. It’s done. And you weren’t there to stop it.”

Her words stabbed through his heart like a stake. He had failed her. He knew this now, but he didn’t know how to fix it. If he could fix it.

She stepped past him to the door and ran her fingers over the lock. “You abandoned me over some throwaway words. I can’t take the chance you’ll do it again.”

That wasn’t going to happen as he wasn’t ever leaving her again. “If I swore I wouldn’t?” When she didn’t respond, he placed his hand over hers on the knob. “Don’t answer me now. When you’re ready, we’ll talk. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ve got to get back to my friends,” she said. He hesitated then dropped his hand. She opened the door and walked out.

When the door shut behind her, he slumped against the box behind him and ran a hand over his face. His mind tried to make sense of just how everything in his life had gone to absolute crap. A few days ago he thought he had it all under control, that his actions had all been for the best. That his mate would see that and understand.

If he could just get her to listen. Since they didn’t seem to be able to stay in the same room together for more than five minutes without fighting he didn’t see that happening any time soon. Fighting or shoving their tongues down each other’s throats, he amended. He much preferred the latter. He ran a fingertip over his lips, the feel of hers still lingering. She was his. Her heart knew it. Her body knew it. Now he just had to convince her mind. He smiled. This was going to be fun.

Chapter Eight

“I’m going to kill him.” Juliana growled and slammed her glass on the table. “I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to dump his twice dead corpse in the deepest darkest hole I can find.” Her drinking companions snapped around in their chairs to see what had set her off. Thomas pulled the storeroom door shut behind him. His hair was tousled, his black T-shirt half pulled out of his pants. He looked far less composed than he had when she left him minutes before.

He made a show of tucking in his shirt and running his hands through his hair to fix it. More than one bar patron glanced at her before leaning over to their companions and spreading the rumors. Why didn’t he just brand her and be done with it?

Simon arched a brow in disapproval but Seamus howled with laughter. She scowled at him but that only made him laugh harder. “Oh, he’s good. I’ll give him that.” She wanted to smack him, but gave him credit for knowing Thomas was playing the crowd.

“A gentleman would have put himself to rights in private,” Simon said.

“A gentleman wouldn’t get it on in the back room,” Seamus responded.

She glared at them. “Nothing happened. Not a damn thing.”

Simon suddenly stood and held out a hand with a grin. “Dance with me?”

She studied him a moment trying to remember the last time she danced. “Why not?” she said, taking the hand.

He pulled her out to the middle of the floor. They squeezed between sweaty bodies and tried to find a spot where they wouldn’t be trampled. Her head swam from the heat and the three shots of tequila she managed to down. He found a spot and turned her to face him.

Closing her eyes, she swung her hips to the music. She entwined her arms above her head, ignoring the twinge of pain that accompanied the motion. Hot hands ran up her arms, entangled fingers with hers. They pulled her arms down and wrapped them around her middle. Pulled back against a firm torso, she molded to the body behind her, knowing without looking it was Thomas.

“You called to me from across the room, Joya. I could not resist,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. A tremble ran through her as he began to rock with the music.

She opened her eyes to see Simon backing away with a nod and a crooked smile. He was abandoning her. Damn him. She tightened her fingers on Thomas’s and turned her head so their lips were a whisper away from each other. “Providing more fodder for the rumor mill?”

His lips twitched. “I can’t help myself. You bring out my possessive tendencies like no one else. I just want them all to be aware that you are unavailable.”

She tugged on his hands and he released her waist without argument. Her brain railed at her for not disagreeing with him. For not insisting she didn’t belong to him. Turning, she looked up at him and tried to make sense of the cacophony of emotions screaming for attention. The truth was she did belong to him. She always had. And how she hated it.

She shook her head, turned away and made her way back to the table where the twins waited. Exhaustion blindsided her. Too much emotional drainage for one day. It must have shown on her face because Simon piped up. “Let’s get you home.”

Home was the last place she wanted to go. There was no one to spend the night with but her own paranoia. The boys would sleep over if she asked, but she wasn’t ready for that level of humiliation. And Thomas...well, it would be better if she kept her thoughts—and her libido—from going down that path.

Thomas stepped in front of them, stopping them before they took two steps toward the door. She waited for him to say whatever it was he had to say. “My sister called me. She said you weren’t answering your phone and she has a...code four, I believe she called it.”

A code four meant Sara’s daughter Rachel was asking for a visit from Auntie J. As late as it was, the girl was probably still awake.

Seamus pulled Juliana’s phone from his pocket. He’d put it there for safe keeping after he confiscated it at the house. “Sorry,” he said with a shrug and handed it over.

She scrolled through her three missed calls. They were all from Sara.

While she was sure the twins wouldn’t mind accompanying her to Sara’s house, they’d done their duty for