Page 28 of Soulbound

A little thrill went through her. She'd interpreted his displeasure as something else, but was he actually jealous?

Her first instinct was to reassure him, but the words caught in her throat. And Cleo realized she didn't want to reassure him. It might be petty, but he was the one who said this marriage needed to remain one of convenience. "He can salivate all he likes. I find men often do. It doesn't mean he's going to lay one pretty little finger upon me."

"You don't—"

"Oh, no, please," she interrupted, "continue with your lecture about how foolish I must be to dance with the man in a crowded place, when I knew you and the others were within calling distance—"

"Why didn't you call then?"

Cleo paused. There were a half dozen excuses she could have offered, all to do with the Wand, and their mission, and her intentions to take a reading of the man, but she'd never liked subterfuge, not even in her own thoughts. "Did you know, I've never had a man dance with me? Not beyond my dancing tutors, or perhaps my father dancing with me once or twice, when I was a little girl. I've never been kissed, or courted, or anything else."

"You wished to dance with him?"

I wanted to dance with you, but you won't even touch me. She steeled herself and tipped her chin up. "Yes."

She'd rarely seen Sebastian ruffled. He'd dealt with his mother with cold fury, and it had taken her days of watching him to even realize his careful, controlled actions were intended to protect his inner thoughts and emotions from the world. But the muscle in his jaw flexed now, and he visibly swallowed before he glanced down at her. "I see."

No, you don't. Her lips pressed together firmly. "It was just a dance. Just one dance. And it's never going to happen again, so I don't particularly wish to speak about it anymore."

"As you wish."

"Let's focus on the Wand." At least they had a common mission in mind.

Sebastian offered her his arm, and the gesture was unusual enough she took it. His forearm flexed beneath her touch, but his gaze roved the area. She couldn’t tell whether he was reading Remington’s wariness, or whether he saw something else. But the three men might as well be lions prowling a dangerous new territory, prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.

"I came here with my mother to hand over the wand," he murmured. "But it’s different, seeing it now I can cut through illusions. This entire garden is full of a web of spell work. I can’t quite see what it all hides, but there’s something at work here. Something powerful."

"It’s not just an illusion," Remington said curtly, as they climbed the steps to the manor. "It’s an enticement. Allure. Or a lure, you could say. Malachi’s no longer entirely human."

"So you keep saying," Sebastian muttered.

If a man like Remington Cross was nervous, then she was too. Premonition itched along her nerves like a trail of ants over her skin. "Something’s going to happen. I’m just not entirely certain what."

She’d know if they were walking into danger, wouldn’t she?

Sebastian gave her a sidelong glance. "Let me know if that itch gets stronger."

And if they couldn’t speak? If she was somehow unable to warn him? "Perhaps tonight would be a good time to lower the shields on the bond? You would know the instant I would."

The forearm beneath her touch flexed, and he bent his head toward her. A long tense moment of hesitation stretched out, where she was certain he’d deny her, and then he nodded. "Agreed."

There was no warning. The bond was a distant, burning knot in the back of her mind one second, with her husband very firmly walled off behind it. The next… it was as if the bond suddenly slammed into place.

There were suddenly two of them in her head, tangled and meshed against each other. Thoughts whirled, some too fast to catch. But her sheer amazement radiated through the psychic link, returned with equal shock by him.

This was the first time he’d truly opened himself to her since the bond was formed.

She’d lost the sensation of it not long after she bonded him, and he discovered how to wall himself away, but it was only now that—compared to the loss of her Visions—she realized what else she had lost. It was like discovering an amputated limb had returned. A sense of wholeness.

Loneliness swept away.

Two hearts beat as one.

And she could feel him; his body, his mind, his thoughts…. An intimacy nothing else could compare to.

The world somehow faded around them. Oh, she was aware of it in some peripheral way, but it felt as though Sebastian was such a vibrant force of nature against her senses that the rest of the world simply mattered less.

Cleo managed to gain control of herself, realizing she was leaning against him heavily, her breast brushing against his arm.