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KANE ISN’T ANYWHERE in sight when I cut around the river bend to the waterfall.
There are worse places to be disappointed, I guess. I slide down a tree and stretch my legs out.
The endless plunge of white-water rushing down the rocky steps is noisy and chaotic and calming.
Mesmerizing.
My secrets and lies and reasons spill away into the fall of water, giving me a short spell of peace until a shadow crosses over me.
My eyes lift to Kane. “You’re here.”
“Yesterday, too,” he drawls.
“Something came up.”
“I figured.” He pushes a hand through his hair, his gaze dipped to me, his jaw bristled and deeply hollowed with the tension of thoughts I can’t read.
He’s dressed in his old clothes. Black boots and black cargo pants and a long-sleeved black t-shirt that defines the lean muscle of his arm as he brings his hand down from his hair.
“What did you do? Charm a chamber maid into hiding all the silk?”
“Something like that.” No humor. “We’re in the open here. Come.”
He extends a hand to me and I foolishly take it. His grasp sends a charge to my pulse as he pulls me to my feet with a smooth, sure tug. Expected. What I’m not prepared for is the warm strength of his fingers and how badly I don’t want to let go.
I extract my hand, tuck it safely behind my back as I scan the river bank and surrounding woods.
We don’t push deeper into the trees. Kane leads the way to a shallow crossing where the water swirls around flat slabs of bedrock.
“It’s slippery.” He holds his hand out to me again.
I ignore the offer, removing my impractical silk slippers and rolling up the bottom of my pants instead.
He smirks, says nothing, just waves me ahead of him.
I tread carefully, using my toes for grip. Kane is one step behind me, probably primed to catch me when I fall. Thankfully the frigid water splashing the rocks doesn’t have the force to unbalance me.
The other side is jagged rock. I toss my slippers up to a ledge so I have the use of both hands as I clamber up. The waterfall steps end about three meters above the river—the height of the large cave hidden behind the drop of water.
“I had no idea this was here,” I say, my voice echoing and fading into the roar of water that curtains the opening. “It’s amazing.”
And dim and cool and reeking of damp.
“I had plenty of time to explore yesterday.” Kane gestures to the ledge where I tossed my slippers. It’s also the only sunny spot to sit. “All yours.”
I’m not about to argue. I prop myself against the cave entrance, rubbing the chill from my arms. “Tell me you have a plan to get us away from here.”
“I’m working on it,” he murmurs as he plants himself on the ground beside me. “Getting away is easy enough. Staying gone is the trick.”
“There must be somewhere they can’t track us.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
My scowl digs into him. Between the prince and the king and the math, he’s not taking this nearly seriously enough. “I’m not sure you appreciate the urgency.”
“Three hunts every year,” he says, his eyes hardening into my scowl. “That’s twenty people every year. Do you know how many Silks are currently in the barracks?” He doesn’t wait for me to say no. “Thirty-two. Either Silks have a very short expiration date or they’re being set free into the wilds. I’m betting on the former. So yes, Senna, I do appreciate the urgency.”
Okay, so maybe he does. I consider telling him about the king, but thirty-two is worse than my calculations. The king’s not solely responsible for the small Silk numbers.
I blow out a noisy breath. Next problem. “Remember Amanda Gibbons?”
“She was at the banquet.”
“She’s in the House of Ell with me.”
“I wondered, when you arrived together with Mistress Ell.”
“She’s curious about you being here,” I say. “I told her your cover story, but I don’t think she bought it.”
“No surprise there.” He pulls a knee up to drape his arm over, his eyes creasing on me. “So, the prince?”
I swallow beneath his concern, beneath the knowing in his look. “Interesting fact. We’re immune to the virus. That’s why we don’t turn when they feed on us.”
“Yeah, that is interesting. We must have developed resistance over the years.”
“Not exactly. Ironcross was apparently founded on immune survivors,” I tell him. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” He shakes his head, processing. “That doesn’t fit.”
“The prince told me himself.”
“You believe him?”
“Don’t ask, it’s a long story, but I believe him one hundred percent.”
“The night before the wedding, there was another ceremony. The princess, Sahara, was sworn in as an elite.”
“You attended?”
“No, I was presented as a gift afterward,” he says. “The prince was there, the first time she drank my blood. He was instructing her, teaching her how to feed from a warm vein. I assumed she’d recently been turned.”
“Vampyre puberty?” I suggest. “Interesting fact number two. The prince married because he needs an heir.”
“That’s how they’re doing it,” he says slowly. “The virus is passed down to their children.”
Not a virus. But the Vampyre gene is definitely inherited.
Kane curses beneath his breath. “There could be thousands of bloodsuckers out there.”
There could be.
Especially considering they carry to full term in twenty-eight days.
The prince’s words ebb and flow, a tidal storm inside my head. Royal males are extremely fertile. Consuming Vampyre blood is poison. On the twenty-eighth day, the child is born.
Maybe the non-elites are less fertile.
The prince’s mother died, poisoned by his father’s blood. How many female Vampyres survive pregnancy and childbirth?
Kane leans in, his knuckles scraping beneath my chin. “What is it?”
I blink. “What?”
“You were a million miles away.”
“Just thinking.”
His knuckles fall away. “About?”
“Nothing,” I find myself saying.
It’s so convoluted, I wouldn’t know where to begin. And what difference does it really make? Vampyre or bloodsucker or diseased human. Just names to describe the same monster. They’re reproducing. That’s what’s important. Trying to explain the how just makes my brain hurt and doesn’t add anything to the conversation.
A smile flickers across Kane’s face. “Try me.”
“I discovered something else,” I say. “Their super hearing isn’t turned on all the time. They have to tune in, and they only do that when they’ve got a reason to listen.”
He stretches his arms back to lean on the heels of his palms, his mouth twisting into something between a grin and a grimace. “You’ve been busy.”
“I’ve been busy.” I look out past the edge of the falling water, not the least bit proud. The things I’ve done...
I feel his eyes on me, the intensity of his stare. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish he’d leave well alone.
He doesn’t. “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Anything.” His voice is oats and honey, velvet dragged through gravel. “Everything.”
I’m too alone in my darkness, too lost to resist. “I saw Gabe earlier.”
A pause. “I heard Gabriel was indefinitely confined to the barracks.”
I shoot a look at him.
“What?” He shrugs. “Half the barrack Silks seem to work in the castle. They talk.”
“No, they don’t.” He seriously did charm the chamber maid.
“They let you inside the barracks?”
“I got Gabe out,” I say. “Amanda helped.”
“Amanda helped,” he drags out through his teeth.
My thoughts hone in on my niggling doubts about her tactics. “Is there something I should know? Can’t I trust her?”
“Amanda is loyal to a fault,” he says. “She’d do anything for her family and friends.”
“How is that bad?”
“You’re not her friend.” He hunches forward, arms crossed on his knees, tension pulling at his jaw again. “How did she help? What did you ask her to do?”
I hesitate, just like I did with Gabe.
I made a blood deal with the guard and I don’t regret it.
But Kane isn’t Gabe. He won’t shy away from my ugly parts. He’ll judge me. Absolve me. Condemn me. I’ll take any and all.
I need someone to see me as I am now, someone who’ll know where to look if I go missing in the darkness. Someone who cares just enough to come searching, but doesn’t care enough to lose himself with me.
“I didn’t ask,” I say. “Amanda offered. She introduced me to a guard who trades favors for blood. He arranged for Gabe to work outside the barracks. In the stables.”
Kane’s gaze drops to the fist he’s clenching.
“You can say it.” I wanted this. I wanted to look at myself through his eyes. It still hurts. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“I’m a blood whore.”
He doesn’t respond for the longest time, just clenches and unclenches that fist in slow motion.
When he speaks, there’s not an ounce of emotion in his voice. “I’d like to ram my fist through the heart of every bloodsucker in my path until they bring me down. That would be so damn good, but it wouldn’t do any damn good for you or Ironcross or any human left in this world. I want to tear out the throat of every bloodsucker that put the word whore in your head.”
My God. And I thought I was a mess of unresolved emotions.
“That’s what’s I’m thinking.” He spears his fingers through his hair, studying me beneath a furrowed brow. “We’re blood bags to them, Senna. That is all.”
“That’s not all.”
His eyes are cold, flat. His face is chiseled bone and granite hollows. His voice is butter soft. “Senna.”
“Kane.” I don’t need to spell it out. The princess is an elite.
“It’s just brain chemistry, an hallucination,” he says. “It’s not real.”
“I feel it.” My hands bunch into tight balls on my lap. “I feel it, and with it, I feel the prince all over me, his touch, his breath on my skin, his mouth sucking on my throat. That’s as real as it gets.”
“Then take control of the fantasy in your head,” he says firmly, gently, a lion treading on broken glass.
It’s not necessary. I’m not that fragile. But I do appreciate the effort.
“Don’t give him that power over you. Senna. Go someplace else. Be with someone else.”
“Go where?”
“You can’t think of one other person you’d rather make out with than the prince?”
He means like a fantasy. “You mean Gabe.”
“Bingo.”
“No!”
“Ah, come on.” A grin teases the flat line of his mouth. “I know it was a bad break-up, but there must be some fond memories you can hold onto.”
“It’s not that.” I give him a look. He’ll never understand. “I still love Gabe.”
“Of course you do.” He rubs a hand over his mouth with a dry chuckle. “The two of you are a walking advert for why I swore off love. So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s complicated.”
His stone-gray eyes linger on me. “A girl I once knew told me the truth is always simple. It’s the lies that complicate everything.”
“In this instance, it’s more that you wouldn’t understand, being a cold-hearted cynic and all.”
“True.” His mouth softens. “You should probably be talking to Gabriel about this.”
“Yeah, well, that’s part of the problem,” I say. “The brain chemistry thing, as you call it, is also a royal pheromones thing. It doesn’t happen when the other Vampyres feed. Gabe doesn’t know about any of this and I don’t want to bring him into it and I can’t...I’m not going to use him like some dirty escape fantasy.”
“I’m a guy,” Kane says. “Believe me when I say Gabriel won’t mind.”
“But I would,” I sigh. “If we maybe have a future together one day, if we ever leave this place, I’d have to live with that association, with the prince in my head every time Gabe and I... It’s not fair on Gabe. It’s not fair on me. It would destroy us.”
I trail off, fully aware of what I’ve just admitted to Kane...to myself. Some day, some place, Gabe is the only future capable of pulling me back into the light and I’d go through hell before I allow myself to ruin that too.
I knock my head against the rock at my back. “Say something.”
“I’d rather not.”
My eyes roll to him. He’s not choking on silent laughter. There’s that.
“So use me,” he drawls, something wicked playing on his lips.
I pull a face. “What?”
“You know what.” His gaze caresses me. “Come on, don’t pretend you’ve never once indulged in the thought of you and me.”
Little instincts pop up all over me, screaming at me to run.
This is a mistake.
Whatever this is.
“My imagination isn’t quite that self-destruction,” I inform him prickly.
“You don’t need to imagine.” He rises slowly to his feet, his eyes heating into me. “I’m right here.”
My throat goes whisper dry. “Don’t do that.”
He doesn’t ask what.
He takes the two steps to stand over me, one foot planted either side of my stretched out legs, his raven-black hair flopping over the devilish charm that is his arrogant, sculpted face. “You’re thinking this is a mistake.”
I stare up at him. “You literally read my mind.”
“It is,” he says lightly. “I’m bad for you. I’d never give you that unicorn and rainbows future and you know it. That’s what makes me perfect. You can use me, take everything you need from me, and when you’re done, you’ll walk away with no regrets.”
“Run away, more likely,” I say slowly, not really feeling the biting sarcasm. I’m too busy watching his slightly harsh, incredibly sensual mouth forming words.
He is stone and beauty.
I notice.
How can I not?
“You want to.” His gaze washes over me, sends a series of hiccups to my pulse. “We both know you do. What are you so afraid of?”
I don’t absolutely hate just how much I want him. That’s what scares me.
His voice deepens to a sober note. “You need to slam walls up, Senna, or you won’t survive this, not in a way that gives you any damn future worth having. Let me show you how.” He opens his hands for me to take. “It’s just a kiss.”
My heart quickens as I seriously consider it. Kane’s not offering his heart and I have no plans of giving mine—it’s already taken. “Just a kiss?”
“Just a kiss,” he promises with a huskiness that shivers down my spine.
I put my hands in his and allow him to pull me up against the rock.
He doesn’t let go. His fingers thread mine as we stand a heartbeat apart. “Do you trust me?”
For some reason, all it ever takes is for him to ask, and I do. “I trust you.”
“Close your eyes.”
Drawing in a breath that is ash and pine and intensely male, my eyes shutter. I feel him press out the space between us. I feel his bristled jaw lightly scrape over my cheek and rest there. I feel him in my pulse, in the electric charge tingling my senses, in the warmth spilling into my blood.
“I’m going to kiss your neck.” His words brush my skin. The tenderness in his voice sweeps behind my knees. “Don’t panic.”
I feel his breaths trail the path over my jaw and down the line of my throat to linger on the sensitive spot where...every nerve in me pulls, stiff and tense. The prince isn’t here. I trust Kane. But I can still feel his breaths there, right there, and some stubborn dread inside me is waiting for the fire of fangs to tear into me.
Kane’s fingers squeeze around mine, his thumbs massaging the heels of my palms, grounding me to him.
My nerves pull back slightly, then a little more, then all I feel is Kane and the whispery trance of his kisses slowly travelling up my throat. Soft and firm, the rasp of his jaw as his mouth moves, his scent and the heat of his body, the press of his lips to my skin, the sensations building with urgency.
“I’ve been wanting to do this...” he murmurs at the junction of my jaw “...since you whopped me with that platter lid in the canteen and accused me of trespassing on your Tithe.”
“That was an accident.” My lashes flutter open as his kiss drifts off my throat. “And I didn’t accuse you, I was merely curious.”
“You were a distraction I couldn’t get out of my mind.” A grin catches at the corner of his mouth. “Close your eyes.”
“I want to look at you.” Into his stone-baked eyes, hooded like a hungry predator. I want to soak in the arrogant angles and brooding hollows of his face.
My fingers reach uselessly within the strong grasp of my hands. “I want to touch you.”
“Look at me, inside your head. Touch me, inside your head. Do anything you want to me, inside your head.” His gaze sinks to my mouth. “If you want me to kiss that beautiful mouth, close your eyes.”
“Make me,” I say and he does with the breath still on my challenge, his mouth crushing my lips in hard, ruthless passion.
The gentle sweetness is gone with all traces of restraint.
He is a storm unleashed, forcing my lips to part, his mouth shaping mine as he drives his tongue inside to taste and stroke and claim until I am a mess of want and longing.
The kiss changes for us to breathe, his mouth slanting over mine, dragging at my lips, tugging at the core of a desperate need within me.
I strain onto my toes for more of him. My hands struggle to slip free with this need to run my fingers through his silky hair, to caress the dark beauty sculpted into his face, to explore lean muscle and warm skin, to wrap my arms around him and bring me closer.
His fingers lock tightly through mine, refusing to let me go, refusing to give me what I want.
A groan of pure frustration escapes me.
“I know,” Kane breathes out hoarsely. He sounds as ragged as my senses.
And he gives me what I so desperately want.
He moves our hands behind my back and brings me in, flush with the slab of his chest, wedged between his hard thighs, every inch of me pressed to him as he captures my mouth once more. I’m alit with flames of bone-aching desire as the kiss deepens with bruising, urgent intensity, our bodies rubbing hot friction where we touch.
I am consumed beyond reason.
I could resist, I’ve proven that to myself before, but in this moment Kane is all I want. I want to lose myself with him in this darkness. I want to burn with him forever in this tormented hell that has become our world.
He doesn’t let me.
His mouth drags one last sweet, lingering kiss over my lips and then his grip on my hands slips away and he stands back, his head tipped and his hair falling over the rigid set of his jaw.
My fingers claw at the rock behind me, my breaths fast and uneven. I’m not ready to be done.
He looks at me, a heated stare sinking into me, and I know he’s not done either.
“Kane.”
He rakes a hand through his hair as he draws in a deep breath, exhales it with a careless grin. “Just one kiss, remember?”
“Just one kiss.” My veins are thrumming with all things Kane and he’s...he’s flipped some switch. North to south. Just like that day at the rock pool where he made that cold decision to almost kiss me. “Or another science experiment.”
“There was never any science experiment, Senna.” His gaze hooks into me, dead serious again. “Only me, not knowing what the hell to do with you.”
And I have no clue what I’m supposed to do with that. I can’t stay here. If I stay here one more minute, looking into the depths of his eyes, I will do something foolish, something mortifying. “I have to get back to the house.”
He glances at his watch. I’m sure it’s nowhere near noon, but he doesn’t call me out on it. “Let Amanda know I’ll be here tomorrow, will you?”
“Now we trust her?”
He looks at me.
“Whatever.” I snatch my slippers as I scramble down the ledge. “I’ll bring her with me.”
“No, send her alone,” Kane says. “She’s been here three years. I’m hoping she knows what I need to know.”
“Like what?”
“She’ll talk openly if it’s just us,” he goes on, evading the question. “Senna, I’ll try to swing by here every morning. Same time. Okay?”
I throw a pale relic of a smile over my shoulder as I pick my way across the river stones. Open invitation. Just not tomorrow. Now that he has his best friend back, I’m the third wheel to all his secrets.
On the other side, I turn to find Kane leaning against the cave entrance, watching me with hooded eyes and a soft grin.
His hair is messed and there’s something raw, something wild ravaging the hollows of his jaw.
I can’t look away.
Not quite yet.
“Where do you go?” I’m asking before I can think better of it. “Who do you go to?”
He folds his arms, slowly tilts his head while his gaze washes over me, and he answers, “I go wherever you are.”
A flame lights in the region of my heart. I put it out with a broken laugh and continue on my way while good sense still prevails.