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And as if sensing my line of thought, Phillip took strong hold of my face and brought my eyes back to his. “I was falling for you well before those parts of you were ever activated.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it, ignoring the pang of guilt for worrying about Sloan before paying the man in front of me a thought. “You can’t know that. Nothing about my blood has been straightforward. I’m the first of my kind, as far as we know. How the hell can you be certain, Phil?”

There’s something seriously wrong with me. Fuck.

I tried to free myself from his hold, but Phillip chased me and our mouths met again; this time in a way that made me want to cry, mostly because Phillip would never truly know how much I’d betrayed him.

“V…”

It was rare for Phillip to struggle to say something, and it only hit me harder to see the powerful man at a loss, completely unaware of how I felt.

Swallowing the hard lump in my throat, tears broke free of my eyes and I didn’t even bother to hide them. “You kept this from me all this time and chose to tell me now, why?”

Phillip’s thumbs gently wiped away the steady stream of tears, and he sighed loudly. “Because I promised I would be honest with you, andbecause it doesn’t matter how I came to love you, only that I did. You can argue whatever you’d like, but I’m not letting you go ever again, lass.”

I sucked in a sobbing breath and took hold of his wrists. “If I seduced you—”

A smirk tilted his lips. “Who says I didn’t seduce you first? I hear teenage girls can’t help but fall for their super-hot teachers.”

Now he’s pulling the teacher card?

“Your baseless confidence is always so impressive, but you’re not the one with mystical seduction powers here, Phil,” I bemoaned, and Phillip’s smile widened.

Fuck, I don’t deserve him…

Cheating girlfriend with Nigel. Cheating with Phillip. It had to be some kind of cosmic joke at this point for me to be in the arms of one and yearning for another. I couldn’t even blame being young anymore—this was depravity.

The gorgeous man’s eyes glistened like they always did when he found what I said amusing. “Oh, I think some would argue differently.”

“You’re a real tool, you know that,” I grumbled, avoiding his all-seeing eyes. “So what, I’ve been seducing everyone with pheromones or some shit?”

“Who knows,” Phillip replied, not helping at all. “Like you said, you could be doing it with some kind of power, or it’s just that natural V charm. But one way or another, Cash is falling for you.”

“You have to be kidding me,” I rebuked resentfully.

“And only I get to ogle you like that,” Phillip added with a boyish grin.

Hasn’t stop me from ogling, apparently. Fuck my life, seriously.

“So that’s your real issue here,” I taunted, leering at the older Hunter.

Phillip didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t like to share.”

It was evident he was concerned about what the attachment meant for our plan. The usually fifty-steps-ahead Hunter hadn’t expected this plot twist, and now we had to plan for that possibility, too.

But I had bigger issues to worry about it would seem.

Chapter 24

Deal with the Devil

“I’ve been waiting for hours,” Cash complained the second we appeared in front of him. He sat at a table in front of the in-town cafe, one leg crossed over the other and a cup of foam-fancy coffee in his hand.

I eyed the Fae as he took a dainty sip. “Yeah, really seems like you’ve been in dire straits over here,” I taunted, earning myself a petulant look from the light-haired menace.

This dude was sometimes more of a teenage girl than I was, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to such cutesy behavior.

“You expect me to stand here, dutifully awaiting my master’s return?” he sassed back, nostrils curled unattractively.