Page 74 of Cryptic Dreams

“Bastard!” She spits in my face. “You are such abastard.”

I smile like the devil as I rub my nose against hers. “I am,love, and you need to remember it. Live it, breathe it and let it drive you out of this house, out of this city and as far away from me as possible.”

Her stare narrows further. “You’re a transparent bastard who’s completely full of shit.”

My head jerks back as if she’d actually slapped me. “Pardon?”

“You heard me.” Zephyr wiggles in my hold but I tighten it. “You are as transparent as a fucking window, Wraith. I know why you told me everything you did at Plasma, why you told me everything just now. You’re trying to scare me, hurt me, to push me away because you think I’m in danger by staying with you. By being with you. Bylovingyou.”

Well, shite.

Perhaps there is some merit to the rumors surrounding one’s inability to successfully lie to their mate.I guess I’ll have to try harder.

“The only…” She squirms against me. “The only reason I’m so fucking mad at you is because…” Another wriggle that has me slamming her back into the wall and stupidly pinning her hips with my own. “Is because you told me those things in an attempt to push me away. You brought them up in front of a group while you let your concern for my safety mask itself as anger, dropping things you should have told me in confidence as yourmate,in a way that made you seem like the bastard you think you are.”

Tick, tick, tick.

My heart is hammering, the bomb in my chest seconds from exploding. But once again, I ignore it. I ignore it because we cannot be together. It will get her killed, and I cannot allow that to happen.

“So, finding out that I come from a line of murderers, that I murdered my own sister in cold blood, means nothing to you? That does not make me a bastard?”

She shakes her head.

“Nor does the fact that I offered up innocent human lives to my coven with no regard for them at all, knowing exactly what would happen?Wantingthat to happen?”

Another shake.

I scoff. “Stupid girl, indeed.” My eyes scour her face; the firm expression, the resolute gaze that is unwavering. “And I am not a bastard because I had two submissive slaves while this all went down mere feet away from me?”

“I told you I already knew about that and I’m not sostupidto think that you’ve been abstinent for almost fifteen hundred years.”

I almost laugh at that.

Almost.

Instead, I decide to torture myself, possibly both of us, by rolling my hips against hers as I squeeze the delicate bones in her wrists. “And in your eyes, it does not make me a bastard to bind and torture my playthings? That I whip them and flog them, paddle them while they’re strapped to my table or suspended from my ceiling? You do not think me a vile piece of scum for indulging in seriously depraved behavior, including but not limited to knife play, master-slave roles, and asphyxiation?”

If I wasn’t staring directly into her eyes, I would have missed the way Zephyr’s pupils dilated and the way her irises darkened. But I am, so I sure as fuck didn’t. And that in itself begins to crack my resolve.

“Perhaps I’m looking at it all wrong then, yeah? I’m really just some broken creature, more monster than male that you’d love to put back together, fix until there are no traces of darkness inside me at all?”

Zephyr shakes her head again and takes a deep breath, the movement causing the pert tips of her nipples to rub against my chest.

“No? Don’t think I can be fixed? Is that an admission that I am truly a bastard?”

“No,” she pants as I roll my hips again. “It’s not.”

“Then what do you want,mate? If you do not want to fix my broken pieces and change the monster back into a male of worth, then what is it youwant?”

“I just want to love you.” Zephyr didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, just responded immediately and it fucking slays me.

Slays me to the point of almost breaking down these walls I’m desperately trying to build and allowing us both that simple request. But I make one last attempt so I can at least say I tried. When my bastard father ruins our lives and tries to take her from me, I’ll be able to tell us both I tried in vain to prevent it from happening.Tried and failed.

“You really are a silly, stupid girl, aren’t you?” I shake my head in disgust as I let go of her wrists and push away from her. “Get out.”

“No.”

My eyes narrow.