“Max…”
“Be quiet!”
Oh, hell no! “Excuse me –”
He kissed me. There was nothing gentle in it. His lips were demanding, his tongue scalding the inside of my mouth. The mating link burst with a kind of roaring inferno that sapped the new energy from me and had me clinging to the front of his shirt. Max’s left hand closed over my throat. So big. His thumb caressed the line of my jaw. I moaned when his teeth bit down gently on my bottom lip.
I traced the mark with my tongue when he moved away, his stubble grazing my ear. “Sophie,” he rumbled. The burning need in that single lament made something hot curl between my legs.
He pressed my head back against the wall. And then his hand moved back beside my shoulder. My eyes flicked open, mourning the loss of him. I wanted...I wasn’t sure what I wanted. The hostile sensation made me want to commit some violence of my own. “Max.”
“That’s about one millionth of what it’s been like for me,” he said, voice scraping at me with both desire and discontent.
I went still, feeling like a raging animal myself. His claws bit into the wall. Plaster crumbled onto the pillow. “You had no right to make that decision for me.” It was a rumble in the lion’s menacing tone.
“I made the decision for myself. I have a right to that.”
His laugh was laced with bitterness. “You had the right to reject me once I knew the truth. Hiding the most important connection a shifter will ever experience from me was not your choice to make.” His top lip curled, the edge of his fangs visible and growing sharper by the second. “I can still feel you fighting it. Trying to find a way out of it. I want to know why.”
Insanity stared out at me when I blinked. My heart thumped in my chest. It felt like it was beating too slowly. That voice rose up in my mind. Those ominous premonitions that threatened to make my throat close over.
“Sophie!” The snarl snapped me back to the present. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“It’s my fault that Kai is gone.” Saying his name aloud brought back Apollyon’s threat. Pushing it aside for now, I focused on the present issue. Max’s expression showed confusion.
“What are you talking about?”
My head dropped and I traced the geometric pattern on the blanket. “I made a mistake with the words of light and my magic hit him before the kickback from the soul gate. It’s my fault all of this is happening.”
Gold ringed his eyes. He took in a deep breath and exhaled a few times. I braced myself, expecting true anger. “Sophie,” he said, voice soothing. “From my side of the soul circle, something was already trying to get him. Whatever it is you did, you probably saved him. And even if that’s not the case, you never meant to hurt him.”
“I…” Confusion made me bite my lip. “I don’t understand.”
He tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Whatever happened to Kai isn’t your fault.”
I picked at my cuticles. “How is that possible?” I was saying all kinds of crap as I tried to dredge up my memories of that day. It didn’t help. All I could see was the moment he disappeared.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I felt tears pricking again. “Apollyon has him. His body, at least. I don’t know how to get him back.”
His arms closed around me, his muscles still tense in anger, but his protectiveness made it impossible for him to see me hurt. “Now we know where he is. We can find him.”
Through the link, I felt his certainty. He was a hunter, and now he had an idea of the prey he needed to run down. Chains broke in his mind. I heard a lion’s quiet rumble of relief. For a fleeting moment, I couldn’t breathe when I wondered if this quest would be what killed him. And then, the mating link dobbed on me.
It hummed with a sense of giddiness like it had done something it considered to be naughty.
“Are you kidding me?” Oh, shit. The link had presented him with my reasoning. His muscles strained but he didn’t move, and I knew it was taking everything in him not to react with violence. “Tell me you didn’t deny the link and reject me twice out of some ridiculous notion that you were protecting me.”
“I...”
He shoved himself up and began to stalk out of the room. “Max?”
At the door, he turned back around. “How else would you prefer for me to die?” he hissed. “What other way would make it acceptable?”
“I don’t want you to die at all!” I screamed at him, the very thought of it making nausea cling to my insides.
“Take a look around,” he said. “We’re staring down the barrel of a war with the Hell dimension. If I die protecting you or someone I love, then my death is worth it.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I hated the way he spoke so casually about it. Like him leaving me was acceptable. “I’m a shifter. Not some human. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I was just trying to protect you!”
He shook his head at me. “You were trying to protect yourself.”
“I beg your pardon? Where the hell are you going?” He was shutting the door even as I spoke.
“I can’t be here right now.”
“So, what? You’re just going to run away after...” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. Something carnal and abrasive scratched at my insides.
“I’m not going to force you into anything you don’t want, Sophie. So yes, I’m going to run away, because I don’t think you want your first time to be an
