Lexi’s face was wet with tears, but she faced his condemnation with what courage she possessed. “I was so sure, Christan, that you had destroyed me lifetime after lifetime. But I was wrong. Scraped down to the raw essence, I’m the monster in the night. I tried to destroy you. I’m everything I ever accused you of being, and you have every right to hate me.”
He said nothing, and she dragged a hand across her cheek, wiping away the moisture. Panic chewed at the edges of courage and she wanted nothing more than to run from her own misery as she had done long ago. The smells and sounds in the room left her hopeless. Memory, of kindling, popping in the warm silence. The faint tang of the smoke, smudging with an exotic freshness. The rustling of cloth, a male hand touching her with tenderness. Of all the endings she could ever have imagined, this ending, in this room they shared all those centuries ago, was not one of them.
“I must go.” Frantic, she looked around. She’d confessed her greatest sin and he said nothing. She saw her discarded clothes across the room, a tumbled pile beside the door. She walked toward them, memories tormenting her mind. His silence, continuing. Muddy jeans, clenched in her hand as she struggled to turn them right-side out. No time, she thought, just grab the clothes, just run.
Staggered, Christan listened to her confession. How many centuries had he wondered, imagined what had driven Gemma that night? Now, he wished she’d never said the words, never remembered what had happened all those centuries ago.
Christan recognized his own responsibility in that desperate act. He’d known who Nico was, realized what the Enforcer was doing. Christan should have protected Gemma. Instead, he drove her toward the man, preferring to hurt her because it was easier than telling her the truth. Rage had driven him in that lifetime, from the guilt he carried, the truth he could never reveal. Even Gaia would not have loved him if she’d learned what he’d become.
But this woman—who she was now in this life—had nothing to do with what happened in the past. She shouldn’t have been punished for it. The pain in her eyes left him undone, shamed by his behavior. This slender, courageous woman who pulled him from an alley not two hours ago, who’d driven through the night toward memories she never should have relived, now believed she deserved his utter condemnation. When she’d told him her truth, he’d searched her face, trying to find Gemma there. But it was like trying to find the face of the man in the moon. Too indistinct to be accurate. All these weeks, he’d refused to see the differences.
He could hear her breathing, ragged in her throat, her body stiff with pain. He knew she was on the edge of running, as she had run from him those long centuries ago. He needed to stop her.
“I thought you lived with courage,” he said roughly. “That to refuse to face your life was an act of cowardice.”
“I have faced it.”
“You are running,” he accused her, angry.
She nodded, her back still turned. “Sometimes that is the only option.”
“I would ask you to stay.” He reached out on a wave of warm power and wished it was his hand. “It was not Gemma’s sin that night, it was mine. She had every right to run. You,” he emphasized, “had every right to run from me. I terrified you in that lifetime.”
“Why?” Her voice was barely above a whisper and he strained to hear. “I remember how we loved each other once. Why do we destroy each other now?”
Christan needed to be as honest as she had been. “I don’t blame Gemma for turning to my enemy. I drove her there. She knew I lied, felt it every time I touched her. I let her believe her own fears because I refused to trust her with my fears. When she grew to hate me for it, I hated her in return. When she begged, I walked away. When she cried, I became angry because of my own guilt. I wanted her to love me, and I knew she never would if she knew who I really was.”
Embers in the fireplace popped, flew angrily into the air in a swirl of emotions and Christan knew his telekinetic power was on the verge of raging uncontrolled.
“She knew nothing of what I am because I refused to tell her. I convinced myself I was protecting her through ignorance. I knew the truth. I was protecting myself, not her, because I was afraid to tell her all the things that I had done. That was why I married her,” he continued harshly, “to bind her to me, to make it easier for me to stay away.”
He saw the small tremor that moved through Lexi, the trembling of a bird’s wing.
“When you said those words to her, Christan. In the chapel, your voice was so deep in your throat. She thought you meant every word. She was so happy. Then she woke and you were gone. It broke her heart.”
“I meant those words—I am damned for it because she knew. You knew, cara, that I was not protecting you, even though you could never put it into words. I knew who Kace was and I did nothing to stop him. In my arrogance I trusted the Agreement would keep you safe, that Kace would never harm you. I could have found ways to protect Gemma, but I didn’t. I could have told her what I was, what I had been obligated to do in the service of the Calata. And I didn’t.”
His voice became deep and rough. “I should have done a better job of loving you. But love is for the angels, and I was never allowed in heaven. I am not a good man. I have always been flawed in ways that can never be repaired.”
The silence drew out with only the continued popping of embers in the fireplace, revealing the depth of pain. Pressure ached in his throat while he waited for her to respond. When she turned, he wanted to hear her as he’d never heard her before.
“You’re not flawed, Christan,” she said. “If you couldn’t tell her your truth, it was because she wouldn’t understand. I remember her tears—I cried them. But I also remember her vengeance. What I did to you in that lifetime—I condemned you beyond all decency, and then I refused to admit what I had done. I would ask, if not your forgiveness, then at least your understanding.”
He stepped close enough to cup her face but didn’t. “You did not condemn me. I condemned myself.”
“And now here we stand.” Lexi was trembling as she stepped away.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t leave.”
And she remembered, then, how he’d filled her heart with simple joy, the one true light in every lifetime. He was the memory she held tight at night. The tears she turned toward the ocean breeze. The whispers when she counted the first five stars. He must have read it in her eyes because he stepped close again. The muddy clothes fell from her hands and she pressed her palms against his chest.
“I carry the scars of what I did to you,” he said, the emptiness in his voice unraveling her. He shifted his weight and restless, aggressive power filled the shadowed room. He cupped her face, wiped the moisture from her cheeks with his thumbs. She trembled and didn’t pull away as he slid the robe from her shoulders, tossed it to the floor. His fingers traced the dip of her throat, to her shoulder in a journey of rediscovery, his eyelids dropping as his hand cupped the soft swell of her breast. A calloused thumb stroked lightly against the sensitive flesh as he waited for the permission he needed in this lifetime.
“Christan,” she whispered, her hands no longer pressing against him but exploring on their own. A shiver of remembered excitement brought every nerve to the surface. She licked her lips, afraid at first, growing braver. “Christan, I’ve…”
“What?” he whispered.
“Missed you.”
Her groan echoed his as he took her mouth. His tongue spread liquid fire while his fingers slid beneath her hair and grasped her nape. He held her until she trembled, lifted her and walked toward their bed. When he put her down she held herself splayed for his taking, a pagan goddess at his command.