Shadowed(132)

Reluctantly, she scooted over to sit beside him. Reddix promptly scooped her up and situated her so that she was sitting sideways on his lap with her legs on the couch.

“That’s better,” he said, frowning. “Now I can see your face while we talk and touch you if you start having problems again.”

“I’ll be fine,” she protested, shifting uncomfortably. She could feel the hard ridge of his cock under her ass, rubbing against her through his black flight trousers. She tried to cross her legs, but that only made it worse as the hard, hot shaft pressed against her sensitive pussy.

“Yeah, you seem fine,” he said dryly. “Stop shifting around so much—this is hard enough as it is.”

No pun intended, she thought, feeling a hysterical giggle rise in her throat. She swallowed it back down and forced herself to relax.

“Okay, fine—so talk. What reason can you possibly give me for being such an ass back on Tarsia?”

He sighed deeply. “First of all you need to know I’m not here to get back with you or try to start a life together.”

“What? Then why even bother coming, you jerk!” She tried to get off his lap, but he held her down, his hands firmly around her waist until she stopped struggling.

“Sit still, damn it! I’m here because I owe you an explanation.”

“Fine.” Nina was fuming now, her arms crossed over her chest. “Explain.”

“I’ll try…” He shook his head and ran a hand over his face. “Okay—to start with, I need you to know I wasn’t just using you to get my RTS fixed. I had the original agreement with the witch—the one I made with her before I came to kidnap you in the first place—but I had no other contact with her after that. I didn’t know she was going to lure you into the swamp. I wouldn’t have had any idea where you went at all if the lthss she put on my wrist hadn’t started shrinking.” He shook his head. “When I saw that, and I knew she had you…I can’t even describe how I felt. I was fucking crazy, Nina. So worried she would hurt you…kill you…” His deep voice grew hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “I didn’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. Especially when it was all my fault.”

Nina nodded thoughtfully. Against her will, his words were making an impact on her. He didn’t seem to be trying to shift the blame for anything—he was taking it all on himself, admitting he was the cause of what had happened.

“All right,” she said at last. “But that still doesn’t tell me why you let me leave thinking you just used me and threw me away like a broken toy you didn’t want anymore.”

“Did I break you?” he murmured roughly, cupping her cheek. “Did I, sweetheart? Because it damn near broke me to watch you fly away. To see that ship disappear into the sky and know you were in it and you weren’t coming back…”

“I wasn’t coming back because you sent me away,” she reminded him tartly.

He sighed deeply. “Yeah, I sent you away—but for your own good.”

“What?” Nina frowned at him. “How could breaking my heart be for my own good? How can you possibly justify—”

“I sent you away because I can’t give you what you need, okay?” A look of pure frustration crossed his face. “Because I don’t have a Touch Sense—or not one that works properly, anyway.”

“What even is that?” Nina demanded. “The witch talked about it some, but I never really understood…”

“It’s an extra sense all Touch Kindred have—or most of them, anyway.” He grimaced. “It gives a male of my kind the ability to touch his female with his mind. He can send whisper-fingers to stroke her, to pleasure her…to penetrate her, without ever physically touching her at all.”

Nina frowned. “And…you can’t do that?”

Reddix sighed. “No. I can’t.”

She looked at him impatiently. “And that’s why you broke up with me? Because you can’t send creepy mind fingers through the air and touch me when you’re across the room or something? That’s it?”

“You don’t understand.” His deep voice was thick with frustration. “A male has to have a working Touch Sense in order to give his female the Deep Touch—that is, penetrating her body and her mind at the same time. And without the Deep Touch bonding cannot occur.”

Nina shook her head. “I still think it’s a crappy excuse.”

“That’s because you still don’t understand. Look…you’ve been around the other Kindred wives for a while now. Have you seen how they can communicate with their males mentally? How in sync the bonded couples are?”