“Why would this happen now and not before?” Zayne asked, sitting on the couch. We’d moved to the living room sometime after he’d sliced and diced his palm. It hadn’t healed, but the bleeding had slowed enough that he was able to remove the cloth he’d bound his palm with. The cut was thin and beaded with blood. Just like the welts on his still-bare shoulder—welts left behind by my virtually human fingernails.

Tearing my gaze from the wounds, I returned to wearing a path in the floor. I was pacing back and forth in front of him, wearing his shirt, which nearly doubled as a dress on me. “I think...I know why. It’s me.”

“Trin...” He lifted his head, closing his hand. “This is not just your fault.”

“I’m not saying it is.” I chewed on my thumbnail. “What I mean is, I think—no, I know I was holding back before. Even though I knew I was...was falling for you. That I already had, but I wasn’t allowing myself to really feel that or acknowledge it.”

“And you did tonight?”

Pacing, I nodded.

“We don’t know if that’s why.”

I stopped and looked at him. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume that’s exactly why. Maybe we were right in the beginning. Or I was. That sex or something physical wasn’t what was forbidden. It was emotion.”

“Love,” he suggested in place of the word emotion. “It’s love, Trin.”

My feet got moving again. “That,” I whispered.

He was silent, and then said, “It’s not a big deal.”

“What?” I nearly shrieked, my pace picking up. “It’s a huge deal, Zayne. You can be killed—”

“I could always be killed. That’s nothing new.”

“You can be killed a Hell of a lot easier now,” I pointed out. “Don’t play this off as if it’s nothing. It’s huge, Zayne. This is why we should’ve fought this. This is why, just because something feels right—”

Zayne caught me around the waist as I passed him, pulling me into his lap. “No,” he said. “This does not mean that, Trin. This only means it is what it is, and we have to deal with it. That’s all.”

My gaze fell to where his uninjured hand circled my wrist. His skin felt the same, impossibly warm. “How can you make it sound like it’s nothing?”

“Because it doesn’t change anything.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “It doesn’t lessen what I feel for you, and I know damn well, after what you just gave me, it doesn’t lessen what you feel for me.”

He was right, and I hated myself a little for that.

“This could be temporary,” he continued. “We don’t know anything other than the fact we’ll have to adapt to it. Together. That’s all we can do.”