She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She shoved the churning emotions down, determined to ignore them. It wasn’t fair that she should feel guilty because of him. He was the one that left. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Not with you.”
“But you can with him?” Thomas hated the pain that threaded through his words. Never in his long life could he remember ever wishing he was anyone but himself. He’d wished it multiple times over the past few days. Every time she turned that smile on someone else, every time she laughed for them, every time he thought about her in someone else’s arms.
“Him?” she asked.
Were there so many she couldn’t narrow it down? “Yes, that giant whose lap you’ve been sitting on since you came in the door this evening.” And Michael. There was always the knowledge of Michael touching her, making her writhe with pleasure festering in the back of Thomas’s brain. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t hold it against them. That promise was becoming harder for him to keep the longer it took her to come back to him where she belonged.
She gripped the edge of a box, her back to him, her shoulders tight as she dropped her head. “You can’t just show up after seven years and step back into my life like you never left. It’s not fair.”
The fact she failed to answer the question didn’t escape his notice. “You have no idea how hard it was to walk away that day. To stay away.” Everything had been for her. So she could live the life she never could have tied to him. He may have hurt her when he left, but every day that went by without her reaching out to him had killed a little piece of him. He’d stayed away until he could bear it no longer and now that he’d returned she never ceased to remind him that she didn’t need him. Didn’t want him.
Finally she turned to face him and crossed her arms over her chest like a shield. “So why did you?”
“You wanted time. You asked for space. I gave it to you. I gave it to you in spades.” It had become a familiar refrain over the years and was far better than admitting the power she held over him. The power she could use against him.
“I was twenty years old. I hadn’t even had a day to adjust to the idea of us yet and you were talking about presenting me to the Council. About my new position in the coven. I was scared.”
Scared didn’t begin to cover it. She’d been terrified, the emotion so heavy in the air that day, it had been a palpable thing. That’s when he realized what he’d taken from her with his own selfish desire to have her tied to him for an eternity. When she asked for time, it gave him the opening he needed to give her a chance to live her life without him in it. Even if only temporarily.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath then looked at him again. “You left me. You took everything from me.”
“I left everything for you. My money, my home, my coven. It’s all yours. It always has been.” He pushed both hands through his hair. “I gave you what you wanted. As much as it killed me to do it, I gave it to you. I only wanted you to be happy.”
“Yeah, my life’s been a regular carnival.” She sighed. “You just left me, Thomas. You left all of us. They assumed I was no longer under your protection. I assumed that. You left me alone under the authority of a vampire who resented my connection to you from the moment you brought me into the coven. There was no protection there for me. No home.”
“Always with the damn secrets,” he snapped. He took a moment to tamp down his temper before continuing. “What happened, Joya? What aren’t you telling me?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Thomas. Not anymore. It’s done. And you weren’t there to stop it.”
Her words stabbed through his heart like a stake. He had failed her. He knew this now, but he didn’t know how to fix it. If he could fix it.
She stepped past him to the door and ran her fingers over the lock. “You abandoned me over some throwaway words. I can’t take the chance you’ll do it again.”
That wasn’t going to happen as he wasn’t ever leaving her again. “If I swore I wouldn’t?” When she didn’t respond, he placed his hand over hers on the knob. “Don’t answer me now. When you’re ready, we’ll talk. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ve got to get back to my friends,” she said. He hesitated then dropped his hand. She opened the door and walked out.
When the door shut behind her, he slumped against the box behind him and ran a hand over his face. His mind tried to make sense of just how everything in his life had gone to absolute crap. A few days ago he thought he had it all under control, that his actions had all been for the best. That his mate would see that and understand.
If he could just get her to listen. Since they didn’t seem to be able to stay in the same room together for more than five minutes without fighting he didn’t see that happening any time soon. Fighting or shoving their tongues down each other’s throats, he amended. He much preferred the latter. He ran a fingertip over his lips, the feel of hers still lingering. She was his. Her heart knew it. Her body knew it. Now he just had to convince her mind. He smiled. This was going to be fun.
Chapter Eight
“I’m going to kill him.” Juliana growled and slammed her glass on the table. “I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to dump his twice dead corpse in the deepest darkest hole I can find.” Her drinking companions snapped around in their chairs to see what had set her off. Thomas pulled the storeroom door shut behind him. His hair was tousled, his black T-shirt half pulled out of his pants. He looked far less composed than he had when she left him minutes before.
He made a show of tucking in his shirt and running his hands through his hair to fix it. More than one bar patron glanced at her before leaning over to their companions and spreading the rumors. Why didn’t he just brand her and be done with it?
Simon arched a brow in disapproval but Seamus howled with laughter. She scowled at him but that only made him laugh harder. “Oh, he’s good. I’ll give him that.” She wanted to smack him, but gave him credit for knowing Thomas was playing the crowd.
“A gentleman would have put himself to rights in private,” Simon said.
“A gentleman wouldn’t get it on in the back room,” Seamus responded.
She glared at them. “Nothing happened. Not a damn thing.”
Simon suddenly stood and held out a hand with a grin. “Dance with me?”
She studied him a moment trying to remember the last time she danced. “Why not?” she said, taking the hand.
He pulled her out to the middle of the floor. They squeezed between sweaty bodies and tried to find a spot where they wouldn’t be trampled. Her head swam from the heat and the three shots of tequila she managed to down. He found a spot and turned her to face him.
Closing her eyes, she swung her hips to the music. She entwined her arms above her head, ignoring the twinge of pain that accompanied the motion. Hot hands ran up her arms, entangled fingers with hers. They pulled her arms down and wrapped them around her middle. Pulled back against a firm torso, she molded to the body behind her, knowing without looking it was Thomas.
“You called to me from across the room, Joya. I could not resist,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. A tremble ran through her as he began to rock with the music.
She opened her eyes to see Simon backing away with a nod and a crooked smile. He was abandoning her. Damn him. She tightened her fingers on Thomas’s and turned her head so their lips were a whisper away from each other. “Providing more fodder for the rumor mill?”