“Mack,” I snapped, bringing him back, “you need to listen to me. You are not responsible for whatever you’ve done.”
He speared me with his gaze. “You don’t get it, do you? That doesn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, I am the one who has to live with the memories. I see their faces. I hear their cries. I relive their pain. What the fuck does guilt have to do with any of it? I just want it to stop.”
“If I’m this person you say I am, then we can figure out a way to end the curse. And I can help you with the memories, too, Mack. I can work with you like I do all my patients.”
“You still don’t remember me, do you?” he snapped.
“Don’t change the subject—”
“Answer me,” he demanded.
I didn’t see where he was going with this, but fine. “No. I don’t remember. But what does that matter?”
“It matters because you always remembered. Sometimes it took a while, but you did. And this time, I passed you on the street. We were two feet apart and you didn’t even look in my direction.”
“You mean before you checked into the center?”
“That was when I knew; even you had recognized that it was time to give up. On me. On us. It is time to move on. And that is why I approached you the way I did, without trying to reignite what we had or felt, Theodora. I just needed your instincts, your curse to kick in so you’d kill me. But this—us.” He toggled his finger between us. “This needs to end.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong. I’m not even close to giving up, Mack. Not even a little.”
Slowly, the human warmth in his eyes faded. He bolted from the armchair and threw me down onto the floor.
“Don’t fucking argue with me, you bitch,” he growled, pinning me by the neck. “You did this to me. You fucking had to offer yourself, didn’t you, óolal? And you knew all along what would happen.”
Clawing at his hands, I choked out the only words I thought would reach him. “Okay. You win,” I croaked. “I’ll kill you.”
Slowly, he released his grip around my neck, and the expression on his face turned to shock. “Fuck.” He scooped me up and pulled me into his broad chest. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Are you all right?”
Panting and grateful for the ability to do so, I nodded frantically, my face pressed against his heaving chest. “I’m okay.” But now, more than ever, I was determined to save him. I didn’t want him to die. He deserved to find peace and live the life I’d robbed him of.
Slowly, Mack pulled back and stared into my eyes, the firelight dancing in his pupils. “Did you mean what you just said? You’ll do it?”
Oh God. I didn’t want to lie to the man, but I had to. He had to see I was on his side. All I needed was to understand how to undo this horrible curse, and perhaps a part of me already knew. I just had to bring it to the surface.
More time. I need more time.
“I meant it,” I lied. “But I want something for it.”
Cradling me in his arms, Mack’s troubled gaze drifted to my lips, and though that wasn’t even close to what I’d planned to propose, I found myself sitting there thinking, Yeah, that’ll work, too. Heck, more time was more time, right?
He smiled in a consoling kind of way, the dark hair falling into his vivid blue eyes. “The first time I saw that same look in your eyes, you got me into a hell of a lot of trouble, woman.”
I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t; my heart was racing all over the place and swooning like crazy. Yes, for a man who’d tried to strangle me only moments earlier. But now…God, that look on his face, so hypnotically seductive, so mind-numbingly raw and sweet and so…
Goddamn mine. I slid one hand behind his neck and pulled his mouth to mine. Our lips collided with what felt like an electric spark that rippled through the air. Was this what people meant when they talked about love sometimes feeling like being hit by a bolt of lightning? Whatever the case, I couldn’t deny what I felt inside my soul, a need so deep I never wanted to let him go.
I poured myself into the kiss and savored the roughness of the masculine stubble surrounding two satiny lips.
Of course, kissing this man would feel like that: a sinful contrast. Rough and soft.
He languidly slid his lips over mine, as if also enjoying the texture, and then placed a gentle kiss on the corner of my mouth.
Ohmygod. The sinful sweetness of that did me in. I’d been kissed before, but there’d never been any emotion in it for me. But the two of us, just breathing each other in, pressing our mouths softly together, spoke directly to my heart. The way he carefully kneaded his lips against mine and held me to him, as gentle as ever…So irresistible.