Flamebound A Lone Star Witch No(45)

There’s a part of him that scares me—and a part of who I am when I’m with him that scares me—but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Yes, he lives in shadows and yes, he straddles the line between good and evil every day of his life. And yet, this man, who for so many years has lived on the fringes of eternal darkness, has a more fixed moral code than anyone I know. He sees things, even himself, in black and white. No excuses, no apologies, no such thing as extenuating circumstances. And yet when it comes to me . . . when it comes to me, he isn’t exactly rational. Those lines become even more defined, until anyone who puts so much as a toe over them won’t be tolerated.

The ACW put a whole hell of a lot more over that line than their toes.

Finally giving up on sleep, I push back the covers and stumble into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Normally I play around a little, foam the milk, make a cappuccino, but today I don’t care about fancy. Don’t even care about taste. I just need a caffeine-delivery vehicle.

Lily stumbles into the kitchen a few minutes after I do. I pour her a cup and hand it to her—a dollop of cream and two sugars, just the way she likes it—and try to decipher the garbled words that come out of her mouth.

“You’re speaking in tongues again,” I tell her, pouring myself a second cup of coffee.

She flips me off, then goes back to mainlining her coffee. Finally, after another cup and five minutes of total and absolute silence, she pins me with eyes that are surprisingly bright and sharp after the night we had.

“Why did Declan leave last night?”

Trust Lily to cut right to the chase. “We had a difference of opinion.”

“You argued? How the hell did you have the energy left to form words, let alone argue?”

“It wasn’t an argument so much as a total inability to merge life philosophies.”

“At four in the morning?” She stares at me incredulously. “After everything that happened last night? What gave you the idea that you could merge anything, let alone life philosophies? What the hell is wrong with you?”

And that’s one of the many reasons I love my best friend so much. She has a way of putting things in perspective without even knowing she’s doing it.

“I freaked out. Completely lost my mind, I think.”

“Do tell.” She gets up and pours herself a third cup of coffee, then reaches into the top cupboard for the secret stash of mini chocolate doughnuts. She doles out four of them for each of us because “It’s definitely a four-doughnut morning.”

I couldn’t agree more.

She settles back at the table, coffee in one hand, doughnut in the other, and just looks at me. And looks at me. And looks at me.

I scramble to get my thoughts in order, to try to find a way to explain the jumble of emotions at work inside me. In the end, I settle for just letting the words tumble out in whatever order they want to. “I’m crazy about him and terrified of him all at the same time.”

She cocks her head, studies me. “You think he’ll hurt you?”

“Yes! But not in the way you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, except that that man is devoted to you. You should have seen him last night when you were doing your trance thing. I thought he was going to lose his mind.”

“That’s part of the problem. The feelings between us, they’re just so . . . intense. More intense than anything I’ve ever experienced.”

“And that’s a problem because?”

“Because I’ve never felt like this before. But we’re so different, we look at the world in such opposite ways. I mean, Lily, he thinks murder is an acceptable way to end a disagreement!”

Her eyebrows practically touch her hairline. “Alride?”

“He says no—”

“And you don’t believe him?”

“No, I do.” That was one of the conclusions I came to as I stared up at the ceiling in the early morning hours. “But it very easily could have been him.”

“So now we’re condemning guys based on what we think they’re going to do?” She shoves a whole doughnut in her mouth, contemplating while she chews. “I’ve got to tell you, Xan. That’s not the best idea you’ve ever had. How am I supposed to ever get laid again if I’m constantly worried about something the guy might or might not do six months or six years down the road?”

“I’m not talking about some mythical maybe, Lily.” And then I tell her everything Declan has told me in the last few days.

When I’m done, she does the last thing I expect. She kicks back in her chair and says, “I knew there was a reason I liked that man.”