He just had to hope she was too angry to think about blasting him with her powers. He’d also like it if his cock wasn’t still in let’s play with the hot female mode.
“Harvester.” He jerked his head back to avoid getting whacked in the face by her flailing arm. “I don’t know where I was. You know I can’t remember anything but the last thirty years.”
“Liar! You’ve lied about everything else, you fucking asshole.”
She rocked her head up to bite his shoulder, and shit, that hurt. He shifted to gain leverage and muscled her into the mattress with his forearm over her throat. He kept the pressure light, not wanting to hurt her, but he also didn’t need to have any bites taken out of him.
“Listen to me,” he said roughly, because it wasn’t easy to talk when you were fighting off a snarling hellcat. “I’m not lying. I didn’t even know the truth about myself until a few months ago, after you were taken to Sheoul.”
Eyes shimmering like wet emeralds, she glared up at him, practically frothing with rabid fury. “What,” she ground out, “do you remember?”
“Not much. I can get brief glimpses of my past with you, but most of it is jumbled together. There’s no context.” He paused as a strange vibration began to buzz the air outside. The sharp, shrill sensation of terror skated over his skin.
“It’s night.” Harvester’s gaze tracked around the room as if seeking the source of the vibration. “Nothing can move now. We’re safe for a couple of hours.”
Safe. He was stuck inside a twelve-by-twelve shack with a fallen angel who hated him. There was nothing safe about any of this. Not for him.
“Now get off me,” she snapped.
“Do you promise you won’t try to kill me?”
“No.” If glares were daggers, he’d be bleeding out from massive trauma right now. “But if I wanted to kill you, I’d have given you the Calder treatment already.”
She had a point. He eased off her, but he braced himself for a possible surprise attack. Harvester had always fought dirty. Instead, she sat up calmly and tugged on her tank top.
Now what? He’d rather have her upset and yelling than eerily silent, like a dormant volcano on the verge of a catastrophic eruption.
“Damn you, Reaver.” Harvester scooted to the far side of the mattress and sat there, staring at him with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted more answers about his past.
And he wanted her forgiveness for what he’d done to her as Yenrieth. The anger over the secret she’d kept from him still lingered, but it was nothing compared to what she must be feeling. He’d had five months to come to grips with who he was. She’d had five minutes.
“You don’t want anything from me.” Acid dripped from her voice. “Just like old times.”
“Don’t,” he said as he reached for her. “Don’t do this.”
She jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me.” She flopped down on the mattress, putting her back to him and shutting him out as effectively as a brick wall. “Leave me alone.”
“Harvester—”
“I said, leave me the fuck alone!” She didn’t turn over, just kept up the impenetrable wall routine. “Just give me some fucking space. Can you do that? Can you follow a command for once in your life?”
The pain in her voice flayed him to the bone. He might be feeling residual hate, but the love he’d had for her was there, too, and while both were tempered by his experiences with her as Reaver, that only seemed to make it worse.
Because as far as he could tell, he’d been a major dick as Yenrieth, and Reaver had no idea how to reconcile who he’d been with who he was now. All he knew was that he was the source of Harvester’s pain. Every single stitch of pain she’d endured for the last five thousand years could be laid on his shoulders.
Bracing his back against the wall, he searched his brain for more memories as he waited for Harvester to process everything. He figured he had about five minutes before she ripped into him again, and sure enough, she sat up with a snarl, her eyes flecked with black.
“How did you learn the truth?”
“Reseph told me.” Man, he couldn’t have been more shocked. “He found out from Lilith.”
“Lilith,” she spat out, and beneath her skin, her veins began to blacken and rise to the surface. “I want her dead. I want her to suffer—”
“She’s dead,” he said before she got more worked up. “Reseph destroyed her.”