He stared at me a second before he lifted a hand, ran it through his dark hair, and looked to the floor, muttering, “Terrific. I’m named after the brother who was murdered and you’re named after the bitch who stole her man’s strength and betrayed him to his enemies. Fuck.” His eyes came back to mine and he dropped his hand. “We’re screwed.”

“I would never do that,” I hissed.

“Good to know,” he kept muttering.

Our conversation was way off target so I commenced in getting us back on track.

“Seriously, honestly, please listen to me.” I leaned toward him. “I want to leave.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t ten feet away from him.

Suddenly, I was pressed to the wall and held there by his body.

“Searchin’,” he whispered, his different colored eyes burning into mine. “My whole life, searchin’ for something, missing something, something I did not know. Until I found you. And my whole life is a long fuckin’ life to be needing something I could not find.”

A long fucking life?

He looked in his early thirties.

“So Delilah,” he went on, “you aren’t leavin’. You aren’t getting your ass killed. You’re stayin’ right here where I can keep you safe. And the first thing you’re doin’ is takin’ a goddamned shower so you stop reekin’ like those fuckers who laid their hands on you and tried to take you from me before I even gave you our first kiss.”

Our first kiss?

Yep.

A big, fat, steaming pile of uh-oh.

“You scare me,” I shared.

“I’ll stop doing that, you get used to me,” he replied.

This was doubtful.

I lifted my hands out to the sides (the only place I could move them) and dropped them. “This whole thing terrifies me, everything about it, and there are lots of everything about it, including the fact you took seven lives in one night all in front of me.”

“You said you didn’t want to die. Do you want me to die?”

At his words, that pain sliced through me again, gutting me in a way I could not hold back my wince.

“Yeah,” he whispered, his quiet word eradicating the pain like that simple piece of proof of him alive, breathing, and talking had that power. Something, by the way, that freaked my shit way out. “They wanted you dead,” he continued. “They wanted me dead. But they got dead. And hopefully Wei and Xun will get that wolf so maybe we can get some answers. Now I need to get out there and help them so you need to take a shower, put on my tee, and get some rest, because whatever shit is happening, I know one thing…it’s only just begun.”