From the way his muscles tensed the moment their lips touched, it was obvious that Ben hated her guts.
I looked at Ben and wondered if he felt toward her the way I felt toward Lucas. The sick feeling that settled in my stomach refused to go away. I refused to even start imagining what Ben had been going through while at the Shade.
Claudia took one last look at Derek. “I could never deny you anything, dear prince. I shall visit again soon.” She then walked away, disappointment evident in the scowl on her face as she returned to her home.
With her gone, I grabbed Ben’s hand and pulled him in an embrace. I eyed Derek and mouthed a sincere thank you his way. He nodded and forced a smile. Having Ben there, I found myself confused, because while I was ecstatic to see my best friend, what I felt most at that moment was how much I adored Derek for what he did. I held on tightly to Ben almost in hopes of regaining my attraction to him if I held on tight enough.
“I hate her,” Ben hissed in my ear. “I hate them all.”
I hugged him tighter. “Don’t worry, Ben. You’re okay now. Derek will keep us both safe.”
“Don’t be a fool, Sofia. We need to get out of here before he decides that he’s tired of you and kills us both.”
The idea made me sick to my stomach. What will happen if Derek ever realizes that I’m no one special… and decides he’s had enough of me? I wanted to believe that such a thing couldn’t ever happen, but Ben always had a way of swaying me with his words. I gave Derek a worried glance. It felt as though I’d just lost him.
Chapter 24: Derek
I hated the tension. Since she moved into my bedroom, Sofia and I naturally developed a familiarity to each other. There wasn’t even any awkwardness to begin with. It was like we just knew how to adjust to each other. Of course, there were times when I was greatly tempted to take a sip of her blood, but it wasn’t anything a glass of blood couldn’t fix.
The night Ben arrived, however, it was like we’d become strangers to each other. The large room suddenly felt too small for the two of us. Any form of balance we’d developed over time completely disappeared. She was slipping away from my fingers by the minute.
Finally, she was lying down on her side of the bed while I sat over the edge of mine, fully intending to lose myself in a book.
She was the one who eventually broke the silence.
“Thank you, Derek. For what you did.”
I had no desire to talk about the boy, so I ignored her thankfulness and changed the topic.
“Lucas approached you earlier. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” she responded a little too quickly. “You know your brother… says a lot of meaningless things.”
“From the way you reacted, what he said looked far from meaningless.” I remembered what Corrine told me about Sofia’s psychological condition and how it was impossible for her not to remember what happened the night she was attacked.
“Has he been hurting you, Sofia?”
She didn’t respond. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” I gripped the sheets of the bed, wondering why I was asking questions whose answers I wouldn’t even know how to act on.
“Has he?”
Sofia sat up on the bed and gripped my wrist.
“Why are you acting like this? You’ve seen Lucas and I interact countless times.”
“Interact? Is that what you do with Lucas?”
I knew I was being irrational and unreasonable, but the image of Sofia with Ben embracing was burning away all rational thought and reason in my mind.
“Has something been going on between you and my brother, Sofia?”
“Me and Lucas?!” She said it through gritted teeth, like it was the most disgusting thing she’d ever heard of. “That’s madness, Derek. I would never…”
I moved fast, pushing her on her back over the bed. I quickly grabbed her wrists and pinned them with one hand over her head and knelt on the bed, straddling her hips.
Her eyes grew wide in question.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a small, broken voice. “Wait! Don’t…”
I grabbed her jaw non-too-gently. It was the first time I could remember treating her in an untoward fashion since the attack the first time I ever set eyes on her. I felt like I was losing her and that it was beyond my control. I wanted to regain some form of control and unreasonable as it was, I was taking my agitation out on her.
“You’re mine, Sofia. Many things have changed between us, but that hasn’t changed.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she just looked at me in a way she hadn’t in a long time. She looked at me with fear.