When she continued to stare at me blankly, I hurried to explain. To some, my decision may have come across as impulsive, but I knew Z would understand. She had to. “When we were...frozen...” My voice wobbled over that one word. Frozen. Entrapped. I could still feel my body weighed down by cement. Clearing my throat, I continued doggedly. Z didn’t laugh as my stutter became more pronounced - something that always occurred when I felt a strong emotion.
“When we were frozen,” I repeated, “we were able to see everything. We watched you come into the garden, but we were helpless to warn you.”
My jaw clenched almost painfully at the memory. I had tried to scream at her, but the words became lost. All I could do was watch...
“The others, at least, were faced away. They didn’t have to see you...they didn’t see you get attacked. They didn’t see your body...”
I began to pace as if that could somehow quell the tension reverberating through me. My fingernails dug into my biceps, and I impatiently scratched at the skin.
“Kill,” she said softly. Sweetly. It was a tone of voice I imagined she wouldn’t use with anyone else, only me. At first, I felt a rush of exhilaration and a strange sense of giddiness. That dissipated just as quickly.
She had to treat me with kid gloves because she thought I was weaker.
Still, I couldn’t resist grabbing the hand she proffered. Immediately, I fell face first onto the bed, and her small body wrapped around mine. I ended up with my head beneath her chin, and her hand lightly stroking my arm.
God, I could die in her embrace.
I loved her.
I loved her so damn much that it sometimes hurt to breathe.
It wasn’t a surprise for me, this revelation. Not really. A part of me had always known it, had known it from the very first time she had protected me. When I had compared her hair to food.
I twirled a piece of her hair around my finger, smiling gently. Definitely spaghetti hair.
“So you want to fight?” Z asked, breaking the silence we had grown accustomed to. I tensed immediately in her arms before willing my body to relax. She wasn’t like my father. She wouldn’t laugh at me or reprimand me or talk down to me.
“I want to protect you,” I admitted earnestly.
Snorting, she tapped her finger against my chin, tilting my head up. I lost myself in her gaze, the heat and love emitting from her. Her pink lips twitched slightly, but it wasn’t in laughter. It almost seemed to be...approval.
“I can take care of myself,” she said. “But I agree. I think you all should learn how to fight...but not to take care of me.” This time, her sigh was resigned. “There’s more to the world than me, Killian. I want you guys to protect yourselves, to live life to its fullest, you know?”
I was silent for a long moment, but not because I was ignoring her. Instead, I processed her words.
She seemed to severely underestimate how much she meant to me and my brothers. The second we had discovered the mate bond between us, she had become our entire world. I knew for certain that I could never go back to the shy, timid boy I was before I met her.
“I don’t know who I am without you,” I admitted, and I could feel her body stiffen beneath mine. I cut her off before she could protest. “I said that wrong. I’ve changed since I met you. We all have. You make us better - better versions of ourselves, you could say. Not one of us wants to go back to the person we were before. Z, you may hate to know this, but you’re our world now. I didn’t know the mate bond could feel like this...feel this right. I want to love you. And hold you. And fuck you senseless. And-“
“You want to fuck me senseless?” Z breathed, and I stilled. That was what she focused on?
And then I realized what I had said, what I had admitted to, and panic raced down my veins.
Abort mission! Abort!
“Fuck is such a crude term,” I stuttered out.
She propped herself onto an elbow, the gesture knocking me onto my back. Her golden hair provided a shield between us and the outside world.
“So you don’t want to fuck me?” she asked innocently, batting those damn eyelashes of hers.
I immediately began to backtrack.
“Of course I want to fuck you! I want to do a lot of things to you. Why would you think that I don’t want to? And-“ I broke off when I saw the mirth dancing in her eyes. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”
She pinched her thumb and pointer finger together. “Just a bit.”
“Just a bit?” My hands flexed on her sides, tightening before releasing. “That’s not nice.”
“Haven’t you heard?” She sprawled onto her back, and I crawled over her. The move found my legs on either side of her thighs and my hands near her head. “I’m not a nice person.”
Her chest rose and fell, lust coloring her cheeks.
And we almost lost her today. I almost lost her. The mere thought had me wrapping her spaghetti hair around my finger once more.
“You scared the shit out of me today, you know that?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“I can’t...” I took a deep breath to rein in my emotions. “I can’t imagine a world without you in it. I don’t want to live in one like that. Do you understand?”
Again, she gifted me with a small nod. I wondered if she was paying any attention to my words. Her gaze flitted from my shoulder blades, to my stomach, and then back to my eyes.
Suddenly, so suddenly that I gasped in shock, her hands grabbed my ass, pulling me even closer.
Her neck strained
