“The stupid shit I did, the people I did it to, they didn’t know why they were doing what they were doing, or that I did it to them. They knew it wasn’t them, but they still did it. It was fucked what I made them do, but it was more fucked watching them react to doin’ something they knew wasn’t in them to do. The women, I erase my bite from their minds. They know they miss it, and when they get it back they think they forgot it, want it, have it, before I take it away again. They just don’t know I’m the one doing it.”

“Right, well, don’t ever do it to me again,” I hissed.

“You were freaking and needed to understand,” he explained.

“You made me bark like a dog!” I shouted.

He lifted his hands in the air and flicked them out impatiently. “Delilah, serious as fuck, would I tell you I could control minds if I intended to control your mind?”

That made sense.

Which sucked.

“Don’t get rational with me when you just made me bark like a dog,” I snapped.

“I didn’t harm you,” he returned, dropping his hands.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I’d never harm you.”

My back shot straight at his tone, a tone that made the words he said burrow inside like they were writing themselves on my soul as a never-ending vow.

“You need to know me,” he said, his voice gentling. “You need to understand what I am, what I can do, who I am. I’m giving that to you. I’m doing it honestly. Nothing held back. You need that. We need that.”

He was right.

That sucked too.

“I think you might get all this is gonna take some getting used to,” I noted in my defense.

“Yeah, I get that,” he replied.

“It’d be freaking awesome if it wasn’t so fucking weird and didn’t come with people trying to kill us.”

I saw his body relax and his mouth get soft before he agreed quietly, “Yeah.”

“You want honesty, I’ll give it back to you,” I began. “All if this is totally flipping me out and I’m hanging on by a thread here.”

“How can I help that?”

He asked the question straight out and instantly, and after he did, my eyes fell on my purse on the table.

Shit.

I looked back to him. “We’re connected, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“No clue.”

“Doesn’t it freak you?”

“No, ’cause for the first time in my life, with you finally in it, I feel whole.”

Oh my God, he felt like me.

He felt like me.

I closed my eyes and let myself feel it, something I’d never felt in my life until him.

Whole.

Even in all the crazy, it felt marvelous.

I opened them again.