Page 70 of Burned

She smiles faintly. “You hate that I’m right.”

“Constantly.”

“Good.”

I ease out of her, and she shivers. I let her put clothes on, I help her dress because I am not a complete animal, though my hands linger often enough that she swats me once.

By the time we are both decent, something has shifted. She reaches up on tiptoe and kisses me. She takes my hand as we leave the porch.

The moment we step back into the house, the rock forms in the pit of my stomach.

The last thing I want to do is take the love of my life to face the woman who still loves me.

CHAPTER TEN

ERIN

Lucian thinksI don’t notice the way everyone looks at us when we return to the library.

I notice. Of course, I notice.

My hair is probably a disaster. My lips feel swollen. My sweater is on backward, which I discovered only after we were already halfway down the hall, and Lucian looked so satisfied by this that I refused to fix it on principle.

It makes me happy. They all know, at least for now, he chooses me.

I wear my post sex glow like a crown.

Let her look. Let her know. He chooses me.

At least, for now.

We sit and wait for her. It’s almost midnight by the time she appears, coming from the doorway that leads to the back staircase.

She packed well. She wears loungewear that I’m sure is cashmere, a black hooded jacket zipped up and matching wide-leg pants. My gaze stops at her fuzzy gray slippers. They seem so out of place on her; I almost smile.

Then her words wash back up on the shore of my mind.

She’s still in love with Lucian.

She settles back into the open chair set apart, facing the rest of us.

She’s washed her face, her flawless skin glowing. She’s got her long blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, parted exactly down the middle and so neatly and carefully done I can see the lines formed by the teeth of her comb.

“I’ll start with after the fire,” she recrosses her legs. “I was kept in a house outside the city for the first year. Carlos was rarely there. I was given little information.”

She sighs, “And I very quickly realized what a fool I was. That I was nothing more to him than a win. He’d won me back and bested Lucian,” she says. “Then, I knew he meant me to be his well-kept prisoner.”

“I was moved. Often. Carlos lived with me in some places and visited others.”

Gregory writes something down. “After this, I’m going to need a list of every address, town, city, place you remember.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says. “There were many. He liked knowing his enemies searched the wrong place. He enjoyed blaming messages that arrived too late on men underneath him he no longer had use for.”

Her gaze finds Lucian. Lucian doesn’t move. She gazes around the room. “Carlos likes to watch without being seen. He gets off on stolen knowledge.”

“Moving around so much, he could spy on his own people,” Rafe offers. “They didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back.”

“And of course, he watched me. Up close, from afar, through the people he had working for him. I saw him less and less. But he was always watching.”