Page 67 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Florentine

W hen I wake up, the night is fully over and I can see the sky through the colored window of Brice’s room.

I slept so well in the smell of him that I’m glad I don’t remember anything I dreamed, especially since he’s looking at me from the chair now facing the bed.

“Did you sleep?” I ask him with a yawn as I stretch my arms above my head.

Brice shakes his head, but his eyes zero in on the sliver of skin that appears at my middle when I raise my arms to stretch.

“A messenger came,” he says, and suddenly I’m sitting ramrod straight in his bed as the blanket—did he cover me last night?—finishes pooling around my hips.

I don’t like the seriousness of his tone, especially since there was a messenger, but he hasn’t said anything about Dad returning. He knows it would be the first thing I would want to know if he was here.

“The foxes are in league with the birds, and the birds now have your father.”

“What do they want?” I ask.

“You,” Brice says with a sigh. “They heard about your weapons, and probably also the fact that you’ve been seen with a bat recently; they gave us three days to trade you for him.”

“Talk about déjà vu,” I mutter under my breath.

I stand from the bed and move to the door, but Brice blocks it with his hand.

“Don’t trade your life for his,” he says, and I don’t know if it’s because I want him to care, but he sounds pleading. “They’re not me. They’re not going to let him go if you go to them.”

“Like you care,” I tell him, with my back facing him.

I can feel his breath on the back of my neck, but I’m not moving, stuck between him and the door.

Brice grabs my arm and turns me so I’m facing him and he’s crowding me against the door, his right arm above my head.

“Of course I care,” he tells me, outraged.

“Oh yeah,” I tell him with all the sass I can muster, considering I just woke up.

“You care about your investment. If I’m gone, who is going to reset your brain?

You don’t care about me. You’re like everyone else.

You just care about what I can do for you, so let me deal with this and stay out of my way. ”

I know I’m being unfair—he showed that he cared even if it’s not in the way I want—and that I’m just distancing myself from him the best I know.

If I don’t care about him, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t either, right?

“Of course you care,” I continue. “You care about my blood. That seemed so good that you had a freaking hard on for almost an hour after that, but didn’t care about what it triggered for me.

I’m just a blood bag or a mistake to you.

You don’t care that I’ve dreamed about that kiss for weeks now and that all it was for you was bloodlust. You’re exactly what I thought you were when you made me work for you. An asshole.”

I feel a tear glide down my cheek, but I don’t make a move to dry it. Instead, I hit his chest with my fists.

“Are you done, Miss Furious?” he asks me when I finally stop hitting.

My breathing is hard, and my vision is blurry. I guess more tears spilled out after that first one.

I can’t answer him anymore though, so instead I tip my chin up in challenge.

With his left hand, he grabs my chin between his thumb and index finger and tips it even more, so I can look him in the eye even with blurry vision.

“I care about you,” he says, and I’m expecting him to say something more, but instead his lips crash against mine and his hand slips from my chin to the back of my neck, and then lowers some more and pulls me by the hip so I’m flush against him.

Maybe I’m still dreaming, but I don’t really care.

I pour my whole self into that kiss and Brice demands entrance with his tongue, and I let him.

The kiss is urgent, almost desperate, as if we both need this more than our next breath, and maybe that’s true because when Brice finally releases my mouth I’m even more breathless than I was after I hit him with my fists.

Brice is not as breathless, but I can still hear him breathing louder than usual.

He removes his hand from my hip to cover my left hand that’s just on top of his heart, my hands having never left his chest after I hit him with my fist.

I still don’t know what to think about what just happened.

Is this even real?

Brice kisses me softly before he speaks again.

“You’re not an asset. You’re not an employee.

You’re not a blood bag, and you’re definitely not a mistake.

You’re what makes my day brighter. You’re a privilege.

You’re a genius and you have the biggest heart I’ve ever seen.

But you’re so used to being dismissed that you can’t see anymore when someone genuinely cares about you.

Yes, I’m an asshole; the biggest one if I let you believe that kiss yesterday was only due to bloodlust on my part.

The only reason I thought it was a mistake is because there is a venom in a bat-shifter’s bite that provokes arousal.

Maybe I’m an idiot, but I thought it was the only reason you answered my kiss.

I didn’t want you to regret it if I followed what I really wanted to do to you, and I’m not talking about how I wanted to eat that pussy of yours right there on your workshop table and fuck you until you forgot your own name.

No, what I’m talking about is that deep need I have inside of me to mark you as mine for the whole world to see.

I may not have had any feeling when I hired you weeks ago, but you awoke more than what was there before the birds disrupted my brain.

You’re all I think about, you’re all I see and all I want, and you’re right, I’m definitely an asshole because I’m not letting you go. ”

Before his words have even registered, his lips are back on mine and I’m drowning in the feel of him.