Page 60 of The Guardian (Dark-Hunter 20)
Why did he find her vague and odd threats so amusing? Other than the fact that they were at least creative, he had no idea.
But he had to come back to one thing in her tirade. "Why did you tell me, then, if no one knows?"
"You were accusing me of being a whore. Thanks, by the way. I'm so glad to know you've been paying attention and taking notes in the Trust classes I've tried to teach you."
Now that reignited his anger. He didn't like for anyone to put words into his mouth. He always spoke plainly so there was no reason to misinterpret his meanings. "I didn't call you a whore."
"You implied it."
"I did no such thing."
"No?" She cocked her neck at him again, letting him know just how angry she still was. "Then I want you to run all of your words backward in your head and listen to them. Then put on my ears and listen to them again, and then tell me what you hear. If that doesn't spell whore in any language, I don't know what does."
She might have a point with that. But he didn't want to admit it right now. "Can we go back to when we weren't fighting?"
"Little late for that now, buddy. You should have thought about that before you opened your mouth." She started signing angry gestures at him.
He tried to follow and understand, but it made no sense to him whatsoever. "I've got to learn your language one day." Although, he definitely understood the last gesture she made at him. "You sure you're not too sore for that after everything we've done? I know I don't mind and I'm certainly willing to accommodate you."
She made a sound of ultimate disgust as she got off the bed and headed to the bathroom, then slammed the door.
Seth couldn't resist calling out after her. "Does that mean I should still be naked when you return?"
She stuck her head back through the door. "You know, I think I liked you better when you were menacing ... and quiet." She slammed the door shut again.
Those words took him back to how he'd lived in Azmodea and he felt all the amusement drain instantly out of his body. In some ways it seemed like a lifetime ago.
And in others, it was still right there, a painful wound that he was afraid would stir again and start throbbing.
But there was one undeniable truth. "I didn't like me then," he said under his breath. He much preferred talking, even fighting, with her than living that miserable life.
Subdued by his somber thoughts, he lay back on the bed that was covered with her sweet scent. He should shower too, but he didn't want to wash her off him.
Not yet.
He wanted to sit here and just breathe her scent in for as long as he could. He picked up his shirt from the floor where she'd dropped it last night after they'd returned from a run to the kitchen to find something to eat.
It, too, smelled like her. He lifted it to his nose to breathe her in at the precise moment she returned.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Well, at least you're not sniffing your body parts, I guess."
Now there was an odd place to go. "What?"
"Nothing. But if you ever do that with my underwear, I will be so grossed out, that I will never, ever touch you again. Just so you know."
He would definitely commit that to memory. Not that he'd had any plans to sniff her underwear, far from it. But he didn't want to do anything to annoy her. "Any other rules I should know about?"
"Keep the toilet seat down at night, and don't eat the last potato chip. Ever."
"I will remember the seat, but have no idea what the other is." Maahes had forgotten to give him that knowledge.
"Good. Keep it that way and we'll get along famously."
She flounced back to bed.
"Are you still mad at me?"
"I am. Will probably be so for some time. Did you really think I was so slutty that I'd put one man at risk to save me and then turn around and sleep with the one who'd promised to hurt him?"
Seth felt a little trapped by the question. The one thing he'd learned with her was that if he said the wrong thing, she closed him out.
If he said the wrong thing and it really annoyed her, she wouldn't let him touch her at all.
He cared for neither scenario.
But before he could stop his mouth from opening, he spoke. "I'm rather surprised you slept with me given that he's your father."
Lydia raked him with another grimace. He would never learn to stop when he was behind. "You're impossible! I swear you learned your social skills from monkeys."
Seth's face fell as if she'd slapped him. He pulled the earphones out and set them and the iPod down. Without a word, he went to the window to stare out at the sea. Completely naked and oblivious to that fact, he made a striking pose there with his arms crossed over his chest.
She was still having to get used to his perfect unscarred body, and the fact that he had no modesty whatsoever.
Her heart thumped hard against her breastbone as she watched him. With no idea what had hurt him, she got up to join him there.
She pressed herself against his spine and wrapped her left arm around his lean waist. "I'm sorry if that hurt you." She rubbed her fingernail down his shoulder blade and kissed a spot on his bicep. "Could you at least tell me why?"
A tic started in his jaw. "It reminded me of something my adoptive mother used to say, and..."
"And what?"
Seth fell silent as he wrestled with emotions he'd never expected to feel again. He cared for this woman. He didn't want to hurt her, but most of all was a fear that he hadn't known since he'd been a child.
Fear that something or someone would take her from him and he'd be unable to protect her. But the worst was the terror that she'd become so disgusted with him, like everyone else had, that she'd leave him for it.
Please don't throw me away, too.
Just once, he wanted to be worth keeping.
"Seth?" She placed her hands on his hips to twist his body back and forth playfully.
He looked down into those haunting topaz eyes that branded him as hers every time he saw them. "It's nothing."
"Okay, but which word do I remove from my vocabulary, oh great knight who formerly said Ni?"
He drew his bows together as he tried to decipher her strange words. "Huh?"
She smiled at him. "It's a movie reference. So what word?"
"Monkeys."
"All right. No monkeys of any kind. Just remind me to move my sock monkey collection off my dresser when we get home."
When we get home ...
Those were the sweetest words he'd ever known. It meant that she saw a future for them.
So why couldn't he?
But every time he tried, he could only imagine himself with Noir again. Was he so scarred that he couldn't believe in anything else?
Or was it a premonition that told him he would never be worthy of happiness.
She trailed her hand slowly down the front of his body until she cupped him. Her fingers worked magic on his body as she massaged him back to life.
He had no idea how he could possibly get hard again. Not after the hours they'd already had together. But it didn't take her long to have him stiff and ready to fill her again.
Turning in her arms, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her like she'd showed him. Then he scooped her up in his arms and returned her to bed so that he could taste her fully.
Lydia shivered as he laved her ear, then moved down her throat to her breasts. He seemed obsessed with those. But his attention this morning was for other things, she realized, as he nibbled a blazing trail down her stomach to the part of her that really should be sore by now.
Yet it wasn't.
