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The next morning, I left before anyone woke.
I was getting fidgety from not feeding. Today, I’d have to feed. No way around it. And Fay wasn’t going to be happy about how I had to do it. I stole a kiss from her cheek and regretted not getting to know what her lips truly tasted like. I left as silently as I could.

When I stepped from the trailer, I saw Aries and Franz talking to a witch
by the river. As soon as Aries saw me, he waved and told them goodbye. He ran over in a sprint and I walked over to meet him halfway. When I reached him, I slammed him against the tree by his neck. “How dare you tell Fay all of my business?”

He smiled and patted my shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

I scoffed and leaned back. “You’re such a bastard.”

He laughed. “She’s adorable,” he said. I raised an eyebrow at him and he lifted his hands in surrender. “And she’s amazing.” I grumbled. “And she’s
half in love with you.”

I shook my h
ead slowly. “I…can’t, Aries.”

“Can’t? Won’t?
”

“Ca
n’t,” I growled. “She’s human. She needs a human.”

He smiled wryly. “Oh, the old eye for an eye bit.” He lifted his bonded wrist. “Your hate for your brother’s mate is showing.”

“I’m sorry,” I grumbled. He looked shocked and cocked his head at me. “It’s not just that. It’s not just that she’s a human. She’s…incredible. She deserves better. I’m a...demon. I don’t even deserve to look at her.”

When he stayed quiet, I looked at him and he w
as smiling barely. “Holy…my, my. I thought I’d never see the day.”

“What?” I barked and let loose my glare on him.

“I thought you just wanted to mate her,” he said with a wink and started to back up. “But Enoch Thames is about to get himself bonded.”

“Don’t even say the words,” I roared and was breathing so heavy I felt lightheaded. But I didn’t need to breathe. It was all in my head.

He just smiled and saluted to me as he walked away.

I couldn’t let her bond herself to
me. She’d be stuck with me forever, a murderer, a bastard. I couldn’t let that happen.

My hands started to shake. I needed to feed so badly and this wasn’t helping.

I lifted my eyes and searched for Franz. I was going to kill two birds with one stone.

When I woke, I expected Enoch to be there still, but he wasn’t. I sighed, knowing that Clara and Eli coming in last night probably hadn’t gone well and I’d just slept through the whole thing. When I got up and got dressed, I ask Clara and Eli what happened and instead of telling me, she immediately started telling me that he was just using me to get back at her and I should just go ahead and forget him. That he was going to hurt me.

So I rolled my eyes and left even as she continued to yell.

             
As soon as my foot hit the dirt and the sun hit my eyes, I saw Enoch marching across the camp. He looked like he was on a mission. I followed him to the big tent that was apparently deemed ground central for this place. Behind it was a community building.

When I got there a couple minutes behind him, there was a li
ttle group gathered there. They seemed to be getting ready for some kind of class or something. Someone hopped up in front of me and smiled really happily. “Hi! We’re having a bow and arrow class. Would you like to join us?”

             
“Uh…” When I tried to move around her, she moved to block my way. It was the first indication that something was wrong. I did that uncomfortable laugh of mine. “What’s going on?”

             
“Nothing? What do you mean?”

             
“You’re blocking me? What’s going on?”
              She made a
pssht
noise and looked behind her. “Nothing is going on.”

             
I put on my military face. “Move.”

             
Her eyes got big. “Uh…”

             
“I don’t know who you are or why you’re…”

             
From behind her I could see Franz in the back hall, and he was escorting Enoch and a woman toward one of the back rooms. “That bastard,” I whispered.

             
“He needs to feed,” the woman blocking me said. “He’s starving. She’ll give him what he needs and then he’ll be okay again. They’ll be done soon and—”

             
“Stop talking.”

             
I pushed her out of the way and ran toward them.

“I’ll feed him.”
They all stopped, hearing me behind them.

“No, Fay,” Enoch
growled and came toward me. “I told you, I don’t want to taste your sorrow.”

I
felt my heart beat hard against my ribs. “That’s not the only way I can feed you, is it?”

He opened his mouth, but stopped. His eyes half-closed and he looked drugged. He sighed which turned into a groan. “Don’t
do this to me,” he whispered in a beg. I leaned back a little, confused. He grabbed my arm and pulled me close. “You know what she’s going to feed me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly. “You don’t want that from me?
At all? Not even after last night?”

“I’ve wanted nothing more from the minute I saw you,” he growled, angrier than I’d seen him in days.

“Then what’s the problem?” I murmured.

I saw everyone in the corner of my eye as they left the room, knowing this was no longer something they needed to see. This was no longer their business. Even
Franz and the witch who was going to feed him left. She smiled at me as she closed the door. I didn’t know what that smile meant.

“Don’t do this just because you’re jealous. You don’t know what you’d be doing to me.
” He squeezed his eyes for a few seconds. “And to yourself. You might bond yourself to me.” I felt my eyebrows rise. “Yeah,” he prodded, seeing my reaction. “Then what? You’d be attached to me forever. An evil thing, a killer, a bastard who just wants to take your soul and keep it for himself.”

“You k
issed me once.” I ignored everything else he said, because really, he was going to do anything and everything to show me the monster in him. Enoch shook his head ‘no’. “In the water, you kissed me so I could breathe, remember?”

“That was different.”

“It didn’t feel different. The way your thumb moved against my cheek to calm me, the way you saved not only my life, but my sanity.” I reached up and mimicked what he’d done for me that day, letting my hand cup his jaw, my thumb sweep against his cheekbone.

“Fay,” he begged. “I’m trying to be the good guy.”

“You’re trying to be the villain,” I said harder. “You’re trying to show me that you’re
not a good guy
and never will be. But that’s not true. A good guy saved me that day, twice, a good guy brought me here and took care of me ever since. A good guy didn’t try to kiss me or take advantage of all the alone time we had in those hotels and on the road and when we got here. A good guy took all the hits that people threw at him and let it roll off his back to save me.” I moved the last inch, wrapping my arm around his neck, and let everything I felt come to the surface. All the hours of tension and want.

I knew when he registered it by the breath he sucked in. His tongue tasted his lower lip, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Fay.”

“Better than sorrow?” I asked and smiled a little.

I was doing this. He needed this and he wasn’t going to keep me from being the one to give him what he needed. I wasn’t just being jealous. Yes, that was some of it, but it was more than that. If he seriously thought I was going to sit in the other room and just
wait
while he and another woman came in here and…did whatever it was that he needed to do to get what he needed to feed, then he clearly didn’t know me.

Why
couldn’t I just give him what he needed?

And
why didn’t he want it from me?

No, I was doing this.

I pushed up on my tiptoes and pulled him down to me at the same time. Right before our lips touched, his palm splayed out on my chest to stop me.

“We don’t have to kiss.” His voice was grated, his breaths loud. “I can feed from you just from thinking about it and talk
ing about it. We don’t actually have to—”

“You were going to kiss her, weren’t you?”

He growled my name. “Fay.”

He groaned the tiniest bit,
registering my emotions, but I kept my face down. I had wanted him, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that he might not want me that way. That was egotistical and stupid. He said he wanted me before, but why
would
he want me? I was a human. He was a creature with power. That woman that was going to feed him was a witch. He was probably pissed that the
feeler
kept getting in his way. I thought I had been right about the way we felt—he saved me, and the way he spoke to me and about me made it seem like his feelings…but I was wrong.

I backed up a step and took a breath, but before I could release the breath, he had my arm in his hand and was turning to press me to the wall. I gasped from the painful collision. He shook his head. “Stupid…human.”

He moved so fast I didn’t see him, and then his mouth was on mine, his chest pressing my back into the wall, his warm hands making trails across my clothes, but it didn’t matter. I could feel his heat everywhere. My breathing was out of control, but it was moot at this point, because Enoch was grasping me tightly in intervals as he sucked in breaths and groaned against my mouth as he took my emotions from me. He tasted like mint.

I reached both hands up and gripped his hair, tugging, all the
while turning to sit on bench, but he followed me down and hovered above me. He paused and waited there, his lips just out of reach, his eyes wide, honest, and open. I realized he was waiting to see if my feelings would change, if I was going to be afraid of him and he was going to be licking my fear from his lips instead of my desire.

I smiled just barely, biting the side of my lip. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He sighed. “You should be. You have no self-preservation,” he muttered and leaned in to kiss me, but he was smiling. I could feel the curve of it. With one arm bent at the elbow to hold himself up and the other hand coasting up and down my ribs at a torturous pace, he kissed me more gently than I could I have imagined being kissed from this gruff, coarse man who was so hell bent on telling the world he was bad. But right now, he was showing me anything but.

And he fed from me.

Every emotion I could muster in that moment I spared for him and pushed to him. He would suck in a deep, ragged breath, letting his fingers dig into my ribs gently, his hips and body moving and undulating with that breath as if it was guiding his very being. I could tell he was trying not to go too far, to keep himself in check, but he wasn’t going to get what he needed if he didn’t let himself go. He was an ornery beast when he needed to feed and I wanted that sweet man that I had glimpsed back. The man that I knew was in there somewhere. No matter how many times Clara told me he was a lost cause and a bad person, that he was just tricking me in an effort to get back at her—I didn’t believe that.

I knew him somehow. I wanted to believe. I chose it.

The fact that he held back now instead of devouring me completely showed that he cared more than he wanted to admit.

I pushed his chest to push him off. He puffed breaths against my neck as he looked down at me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Even now he thought he’d gone too far. I shook my head and pushed him to roll off onto the bench. I crawled up to straddle him and he hissed his protest. “Fay.”

“I love it when you say my name,” I heard myself say. I didn’
t know why I was admitting that again; I just wanted to be honest. “Especially when you can growl it like that.”

He groaned, cursing, and sat up, squaring me on his lap, a leg on either side, and put his hands on my sides. “Fay,” he said—growled—causing me
to smile. He rolled his eyes, but that turned into a chuckle. He cursed again. “You’re killing me, little human.”