Which happened in seconds. Her body relaxed into his until she went boneless. He let her rest there for a few minutes, listening to her steady breathing, her head under his chin.
He wanted to fall asleep here with her as his blanket. But…he should check on Marco, make sure no one had followed them. He should set up a ward spell around both rooms to alert him if anyone tried to get in.
With a sigh, he shifted her to the side, only to feel her arms wrap around his neck.
“Don’t go,” she whispered into his chest, her lips raising goose bumps along his skin.
His own arms tightened around her. “I won’t. Just let me take our clothes off.”
Her eyes never opened but her lips perked in a drowsy smile. “And you didn’t think of that earlier?”
“I was busy earlier.” Rolling her onto her back, he skimmed out of his jeans and t-shirt then helped her take off her top.
The second he laid back down, she scooted against him, draping her body over his, as if to stop him from getting away.
He didn’t mind. He combed his fingers through her hair then palmed her head to keep her cheek against his chest.
“Go to sleep.”
Surprisingly, she had nothing to say to that.
Chapter Ten
“I never did find out who Marco is.”
Steven didn’t bother to turn away from the window to answer her. “He’s Diego’s half brother. They share the same father.”
Fingers curling into the arm of the airplane seat so she didn’t smack him on the back of his rock-hard head, Bella took a deep breath and made a grab for her fast-disappearing patience.
She’d told herself she was going to take the high road, not goad him into speaking to her or start wailing on him with all of her pent-up frustration.
Even though he would totally deserve it if she did.
But, so help her, if he didn’t pull his head out of his ass soon, he was going to find himself with a screaming bitch on his hands.
After a short debate about the wisdom of taking a commercial flight, which limited their escape options should they need one, they’d decided to risk it. They needed to get to Cole as soon as possible and figure out what the hell they were going to do about the
congress
crashers. And what the
Mal
wanted with Cole and the
lucani
.
They’d been able to get a nonstop flight out of Atlanta to New Orleans that left only an hour or so after they got to the airport.
Now they were trapped together, surrounded by
eteri
, and she wanted to talk so he would, by-all-the-gods, going to talk.
“I take it they don’t have such a great relationship,” she said.
Steven shrugged, the motion barely visible in the darkened cabin. “I didn’t ask.” He sighed, shifting in his seat. “Look, we should probably get some sleep. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to New Orleans.”
Anger seethed in her gut as he dropped the final straw that broke the hold she had on her temper.
She knew now was
not
the best time to have this conversation but she was sick of waiting, and frankly, he was a captive audience. They were seated in the last row of first class. The only other occupants were an elderly couple near the front of the plane and a business-suited man asleep two rows in front of them.
Trying to keep her voice level, she said, “No, Steven. I don’t want to get any sleep. I want to talk. Right now.”
He tensed and she scented his rising anger. Fine. It should match her own in a few minutes.
“Now is not the time—”
“You’re wrong.” Her voice snapped through his, fighting to keep her voice to a low growl. “Now is the perfect time. We need to get some things settled before we get to Cole.”
After a second, he turned to face her. He opened his mouth then closed it without saying a word.
Apparently, she’d said the magic word. Cole.
As screwed-up as their relationship was, his relationship with Cole was possibly even more complicated. They had been as close as brothers. Hell, they’d been closer. They’d shared a room. They’d trained together. For eight years, they’d been each other’s sole confidante, bonding over loss and despair.
And it’d only taken one stupid, stupid decision by her to tear them apart.
Her heart hurt to see raw pain flash across his face. It hurt even more to admit she was the cause.
His jaw tensed as he nodded. “Fine.”
She waited but he said nothing. So she gave him both barrels.
“I love you, Steven. I can’t stand living apart from you anymore. We’re meant to be together.” She grabbed his hand, clenched around the seat’s arm between them. “Stop denying yourself and me. Cole offered you a job three years ago, before I…before my accident. I know he’d offer it to you again. Take it. Come back to us—”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re asking.”
Startled by the harsh tone of his voice, she pulled away, her brain trying to formulate a rebuttal. But she couldn’t because the raw agony emanating from him stopped her cold, despair making his eyes bleak.
“Do you think it’s been easy, living apart from the only people I love in the world?” Every word he spoke held a bite, a sharp jagged edge that tore through her flesh. “Do you think I enjoy having my heart torn out of my chest every time I hear…every time I even
think
your name or Cole’s?”
Blessed Goddess, this wasn’t what she’d wanted. He sounded as if she had ripped out his heart with her bare hands.
“Steven—”
“
No
.” He slashed a hand in front of her face. “You asked for this. Now you have to listen.” His dark gaze fixed on hers with blinding intensity. “I
have
to stay away from you. Don’t you understand what will happen if I don’t? If I let go and let myself love you the way I want to?”
He leaned closer, as if she couldn’t hear every word he said.
“If I release my control over my emotions, over
any
of them, that blackness I’ve managed to contain until now will worm its way out of the its hole and it’ll take me under. I’ll lose the part of me you say you love. And I’ll become the monster I was born to be. The monster no one wants to talk about.”
Tears crept into her eyes as he spoke. Tears of despair and frustration, tears she tried to blink away but couldn’t quite. She felt one run down her cheek and watched his eyes track its progress.
“Steven, please—”
“Please what?” His gaze returned to hers and her despair was mirrored in his eyes. “Please love you? Please shut up? Please fuck you? I can do all of those things but they still won’t mean anything at the end of the day because I will never be what you want me to be.”
He moved to frame her face with hands that shook.
Or was that the plane?
“You know how my magic works, Bella. At least you say you do. It’s tied to my emotions. Fear, anger, love. When I’m with you, they’re all mixed together in one huge mess that sits in my stomach like a tumor. It festers there, waiting for a trigger. Waiting for me to use the magic.
“Being around you, being around Cole, it’s like this huge magnet to that darkness. It’s drawn closer to the surface, close enough that I find myself reaching for it before I know I’m doing it.”
Fear began to chill her blood. “Steven, stop—”
He shook his head. “Don’t you see? I can never stop.”
She didn’t believe that,
couldn’t
believe that because if she did, she’d have to admit that she’d lost him forever. “No. When you were working with your mom—”
“Don’t—”
“—you had it under control. You could keep it under control. Why—”
“I killed my mother.”
Her heart hurt at the agony in his voice. “No, Steven. You didn’t.”
But she also knew this was a battle he lived with daily and nothing she said would change his mind.
“When the
Mal
came for me that day, I thought I could use my magic to protect her, to kill them.” His voice sounded dry and raspy, like five miles of bad road. “And I did. I killed them, but I couldn’t control it. I would have killed myself but she…pushed me out of the way of the bolt of lightning I couldn’t control. And it killed her.
I
killed her.”
“No. She saved you. Not even your dad believed you killed her.”
A rumble of thunder echoed through the plane as a flash of lightning shone through the windows.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please return your seats and trays to their upright position and fasten your seatbelts. We’re experiencing some unexpected turbulence…”
The words faded out as she saw tears well in his eyes and another rumble of thunder shook the plane.
A storm had formed out of the seemingly clear blue sky. Thunder vibrated through the plane like a bass echo. In her peripheral vision, she saw dark clouds roiling in the sky and flashes of lightning made the cabin glow for seconds at a time like a strobe light.
This was his doing.
Fear began to build in the pit of her stomach. “Steven, rein it in. You’ve got stop.”
He shook his head, gaze still so intense, his blue eyes glowing in the dark. “Don’t you see, Bella? This is what happens when I’m around you and everyone else I love. I can’t control it.”
“Yes, you can.” He had to. “Make it go away, Steven. Now.”
She felt the strength in his hands, shaking as they cupped her face.
She covered them with her own. “Look at me. You can do it. You can call it back.”
A gust of wind buffeted the plane, making it drop several feet. Several passengers screamed and her stomach rolled but she didn’t move her eyes from Steven’s. “Let it go, love. Let the anger go and close your eyes.”
He shook his head and pulled his hands from under hers. She mourned the contact immediately. “I can’t. That darkness is always there, waiting.”
“No, it’s not. Focus on me.” This time, she placed her hands on his cheeks. “Look at me, Steven. I know you don’t want anything to happen to me. Release the storm. Breathe with me.”
The plane lurched again, not as hard this time and the next roll of thunder sounded farther away than the last.
His gaze bored into hers as he struggled with the part of himself he hated. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he took a deep breath, then another, following her lead.
Another rumble of thunder, this one even farther away.
The plane began to level off and the sky outside began to clear.
Time passed, she didn’t know how much. But finally, with a shaky sigh, Steven fell back into his seat, closing his eyes. Shutting her out.
Blessed Goddess.
Bella leaned back and closed her eyes as well, trying to catch her breath and stop the shakes.
Tinia’s teat. He’d pulled that storm from the air without so much as a ritual spell. His powers had increased over the past three years they’d been apart.
Or he’d been practicing.
No. She didn’t believe that.
When they got to New Orleans, she’d talk to Cole. Cole would be able to figure something out.
Since the death of her parents, the men in her life had been able to fix whatever she’d screwed up. It had taken her several months to control her animal form without her mom’s guiding influence. For those months, Cole had slept by her bed for an entire week on either side of the full moon, when she would wake screaming in terror, fighting her change for fear someone would hunt her down and kill her.
Steven’s father, Michael, had held her hand during her family’s funeral. When Cole had collapsed and Michael had had to help him away from the gravesite, Steven had lifted her into his arms when she would have sat beside the gravestones until she’d died of starvation.
And when Michael had been killed, it had been Cole and Steven holding her hands, forcing her to eat, forcing her to continue to choose the college courses she would return to in the fall.
But then everything had changed. Her stupidity had led to the rift between Cole and Steven. Her brother still blamed Steven for her near-death, wouldn’t forgive the man he loved just as much as he had their brother, Cal.
Because of her.
Her eyes snapped open and she stared at the headrest in front of her.
No, she couldn’t rely on Cole to fix this.
She
had to fix this.
But how?
* * *
Amy Jo woke, her head pillowed on Diego’s slowly rising and falling chest. Complete darkness covered the room. No hint of daylight showed through the curtains at the windows.
Shit
. She was in deep shit.
She inhaled, his spicy scent seeping into her brain, causing last night to replay in extreme slow motion. Her heart raced and she struggled to control her breathing for fear of waking him.
Yeah, right. At least be honest with yourself. You want him to wake so you can have him again.
Oh, God, did she ever.
She’d never had sex like that in her life. Never had it felt so good or so damn right. They’d screwed like they’d known each other for years instead of days.
But now what?
Diego hadn’t exactly pledged his undying love last night. She might have run screaming if he had. Still, he could’ve said something, anything. Like, “Wow, babe. Great lay.” Hell, she would’ve settled for “Thanks.”
Of course, she hadn’t said anything either. Although she had asked him to stay, and here he still was.
Sure, he’d listened to that. Now here they were. An awkward situation just waiting to happen.
She sighed and he stirred, making her freeze in place.
“I know you’re awake.” He spoke directly into her ear. “I can practically hear you thinking.”
He shifted beneath her then dim light spilled from the lamp on the bedside table. Steeling her spine, she propped herself up on an elbow and forced herself to look at him. Dark and heavy-lidded, his gaze made the muscles between her legs contract and she dismantled her sigh in mid-formation.
“Good morning.” It was the only thing she could think of to say that didn’t invoke a lot of questions.
The upward tilt of his gorgeous mouth made it clear he knew what she was doing. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”