Lina’s gaze dropped to the rigid muscles in his arms and got stuck there. Now that Thorne was gone, there was nothing to protect her from her body’s purely sexual response to Dagan’s presence. While he resembled Ronin in many ways, it was the differences that she couldn’t help but notice: the square curve of his jaw, the muscular angles of his body, the fullness of his lips.
Truth be told, the last thing she thought of when she looked at Dagan was Ronin. More like lust and sin and mind-blowing sex. He’d had that effect on her from the moment they’d met…which meant he was far too dangerous to be around. She needed more personal entanglements like she needed a hole in the end. Once upon a time she’d let herself become entangled, and nothing good had come of it.
“No one,” she said, when he raised a brow and turned his sunglass-shielded gaze back to her.
“Lina,” he pressed.
She stifled a shiver when his voice made her stomach flutter and her thighs grow moist. It wasn’t as if he could help the blatant desire his voice sparked. That was only his half siren heritage at work.
“He’s my ex,” she admitted with reluctance.
Dagan slid his sunglasses from his face so that his eyes bored into her. “And who’s Sara?”
The question made her wince and turned her insides into a boiling tempest. Damn Thorne for bringing it up to him. For mentioning her at all. He had no effing right.
“No one,” she repeated weakly.
Dagan stared at her for one long moment before shaking his head. “Bullshit, Lina, who is she?”
Oh fuck, might as well tell him. It wasn’t as if he had to know any details. And she already knew he would persist until he’d gotten a response he was satisfied with. In that, he was far too much like Ronin.
She took a fortifying breath. “Sara was our daughter.”
Chapter Four
Wasn’t it just like a woman to drop a landmine on you and then act as if nothing had happened?
“She was your what?” Dagan ground out, reeling from what Lina had just confessed.
Lina ignored his question, turning instead to stride further into her apartment. He followed her inside and slammed the door shut.
Behind the sofa, which sat in the center of the room, a pass-through window peeked into a tiny kitchen. He carelessly tossed his sunglasses on the counter and stalked after Lina, who’d crossed the room to stare out the large glass window laid into the upper half of her deck door. She didn’t even glance at him, so he grasped her arm. “Lina.”
“What?” She faced him, her eyes blazing with emotion.
“You had a child?”
“Yes. She’s dead.”
The stiffness of Lina’s posture belied her casual tone. This topic hurt her. A lot. How could it not?
Dagan released her arm. “How long ago?”
“Two years.” Lina sighed and ran a hand through her hair, flipping it behind her shoulders. “It’s fine. I’ve adjusted.”
“Bullshit. No one is ever fine after losing their child.”
When her face crumpled, he cursed himself for being a stupid, insensitive bastard. “Oh hell, I’m sorry.”
He tried to pull her into his arms, but she jerked away, composing herself. “Don’t worry about it.”
Even though she’d just rejected him, he ached with the desire to hold her. To comfort her. But she wouldn’t accept that. Not from him. Not from anyone, maybe. So he strove for understanding instead.
“How did it happen?”
After a long pause, she shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Of course not. “Are you ever going to share anything about yourself?”
That earned him a dry glance. “What do you care?”
“I do care.” He lifted a hand to her cheek, and to his surprise, her breath sucked in at his soft caress.
She pulled back, more gently this time. “It’s in the past, Dagan. Thorne and I are no longer bonded.”
“What? You were bonded?” She’d been bonded—the demon equivalent of marriage—and he hadn’t even known?
Wait a second. If he didn’t know…
“Ronin doesn’t have a clue about any of this, does he?”
“No.”
Unable to help himself, he grasped her forearms and whirled her to face him straight-on. Tried to ignore how right she felt in his arms. “You have to tell him.”
In a flash of temper, her eyes changed from their normal powder blue to the color of the roiling sea during a fierce storm. “No, I don’t.”
“When he finds out you’ve been keeping this from him, he’ll be devastated.” And that was an understatement. Ronin blamed himself for the pain Lina had suffered from losing him, even though it hadn’t been Ronin’s fault that Mammon had stolen him away from his mother and adopted sister. Once he learned what Lina had suffered in her past, it would kill him. The only thing that would soften the blow was if Lina told him herself.