Page 62 of Vipers and Vendettas

This is Maddox, I remind myself as I stand up and walk to his bathroom with my head held high, though I feel as if it should be hanging in abject shame. It’s always a power game with him, and I can’t give him the upper hand.

‘You don’t trust me,’ he murmurs, sounding hurt.

‘You don’t trust me either,’ I retort as I go into his bathroom and shut the door.

I clean myself up as best I can, not looking at myself in the mirror.

‘Come back to the bed,’ Maddox says, his tone cajoling.

I give him a look. ‘I have to if I want a good night’s rest,’ I say with a snort. ‘You broke mine.’

He opens the covers for me, and I get under them with a sigh. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not him sliding in next to me. His arms go around me, and he pulls me to him like we’re lovers, not adversaries.

‘I don’t trust you for good reason,’ he says, his fingers making lazy circles on my hip as he speaks. ‘And you know it.’

I nod, staring up at his bed’s canopy again.

‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, not looking at him. ‘With the feather, I mean. You could have just … fed. I would have felt pleasure no matter what with that weird touching thing.’

‘Weird touching thing?’

‘You know what I mean. Why did you do all that? You put in so much effort. You seemed to care about …’ I shake my head, not understanding, and turn it to look at him. ‘You don’t even like me, Julian,’ I whisper.

I’m lucky my voice doesn’t break on the words because saying them makes me feel forlorn. I scramble internally to push the feeling away so that he doesn’t know.

His eyes shutter as he regards me, making him look suddenly dangerous even as he puts up his glamor and dons his human form once more.

‘That’s not quite true,’ he says.

‘Yes, it is,’ I argue. ‘I’m nothing to you. You made sure that I understood that … ever since the Mountain.’

He flinches almost imperceptibly, his countenance darkening. He sits up and takes my hand. I’m relieved that the desperate need his touch was eliciting from me up until a few minutes ago seems to have completely dissipated since he …

Made love to me.

Was that what that was?

‘What I did in the Mountain and in the subsequent days, what I ordered others to do, was deplorable, Julia.’

My mouth falls open.He’s apologizing?

‘As such, I won’t ask for your forgiveness, nor can I offer any justifiable excuse for my behavior.’ He turns away, and I see self-loathing as his eyes catch the large mirror across the room. ‘I thought you were a danger to my clan.’

‘I know you did,’ I say, still reeling from his very formal apology because I never thought he’d admit he was wrong, and I get the impression Julian Maddox rarely says he’s sorry.

I meet his eyes. ‘But now?’

‘Iwassure, Julia, so fucking sure … but now,’ he pushes the hair from my face. ‘Now, I’m not.’

He lets out a breath.

‘I hated you for the power you have over the members of this clan, especially when you left, and I had to watch them all crumble.

He lays down next to me. ‘I wanted to punish you,’ he whispers very quietly as if he doesn’t want to hear himself say it. ‘I still might.’

His hand caresses my face, mimicking when I touched him before.

‘I like you like this,’ he says. ‘So much less artifice.’