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He glanced up at the shelf where she’d been stretched out, trying to snag that copy of Wuthering Heights. Without a word, Sirus climbed the steps of the ladder, his shirt stretched over his muscled back, his pants showcasing his gloriously tight ass. Gwen licked her lips. Good heavens, what she would give to run her hands over his bare skin. To dig her nails into…
At first, Gwen had tried to keep her distance from Sirus to purge her stupid crush from her system. He’d walk into a room, and she’d walk out. He’d come up the other end of the hallway, and she’d power past him with nothing more than a mumbled “Hey.” It wasn’t until both Levian and Barith had separately mentioned her clear avoidance of Sirus that she’d realized how ridiculous she was being. They had both assumed she was upset after everything that had happened in the Hall of Mirrors. That she was avoiding Sirus because he’d drank from her. Their assumptions had made her even more mad, and afterward she’d made a point of not avoiding him. More so, she’d made a point of talking to him anytime anyone else was around.
It’d been a terrible idea. Those little chats had morphed into longer conversations, which on occasion had morphed into him offering to show her bits of the castle or the grounds. In turn, Gwen had started to grow comfortable here at Volkov. She’d grown even more comfortable around Sirus. Too comfortable.
“Wuthering Heights,” he observed, his tone placid and cool.
Gwen tilted her head away, embarrassed at herself for ogling. She swallowed, willing her rising pulse to steady and her voice to remain even. “I haven’t read it in years,” she replied, sounding much calmer than she felt, hoping if he sensed her discomfort he’d read it as nothing more than an aftereffect of nearly breaking her neck.
He stepped down and presented her with the book. “I have.”
Gwen’s brows shot up in surprise as she took it from him. “You read Brontë?”
He relaxed a little, that twinkle she was growing to recognize shifting over his cool blue gaze. “Am I not allowed?” he posed.
She smirked and softly shook her head. “It’s just surprising, is all.” And it was. She could hardly imagine Sirus, of all people, sitting before a fire reading gothic romances. Actually, there was something weirdly poetic about it.
“Is that so?” he drawled.
She cocked a brow and looked up into his face, her lips straining as she fought the urge to laugh. Gwen knew he was negging her.
He looked down to the book in her hands and spoke from memory. “He is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”
Gwen’s mouth fell open slightly. He was quoting Wuthering Heights to her. Sirus…was quoting one of the most iconic lines in all of romantic literature…to her.
That rare, faint twitch of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips at her clear shock. Her eyes immediately fell to that little dimple. Gwen blinked, unable to perform any other function. He’d spoken the words, but there was a depth to them that startled her. As if he’d read them a hundred times. As if he’d felt them and knew them in an intimate way.
Has he felt that way about someone before? In all their conversations, Sirus had never mentioned a lover or a partner, but Gwen knew he must have had them, considering how many lifetimes he’d lived. She wasn’t jealous, exactly, but envious in a different way. She wondered what it would be like to be loved by him, even if it was just for a fleeting moment. Her skin rose with a shiver of goosebumps at the thought.
Gwen knew it was one thing to lust after Sirus, but to know him—to really want to know him—was something else entirely. If she got to know him, she might start to like him. And there was no way in hell she was going to let herself do that. Getting attached to Sirus would be beyond stupid.
“Spoken like a man who’s known love,” she taunted. What possessed her, she had no idea—except that maybe a demonic force had shut off her brain and had taken control of her mouth.
That faint whisper of a smile vanished, and his gaze darkened. A tension slipped over his face in a raw expression that struck her. There was pain there. Subtle but present. She knew she should leave. She knew she should thank him for getting the book, say goodnight, and go back to her room. Her feet didn’t budge.
Ice coursed through Sirus’s veins; a deep pang pierced between his ribs. The comment was teasing but curious on Gwendolyn’s lips.
Spoken like a man who’s known love.
Love.
Sirus had not known love. Not romantic love. At best, he’d been tempted by the idea of it. He had cared for a woman, but romantic love…that was something beyond him.
He swallowed, his mouth as dry as the Sahara, his tongue like sand. For a moment he said nothing, too transfixed on her tender face to form words. When he did speak, he surprised even himself. “I did care for someone once,” he confessed, “but it was a long time ago.”
Gwendolyn’s eyes darkened with a whisper of some emotion he could not entirely place but made his guts wrench. “What happened?” she asked. The moment the words fell from her lips, she blinked wildly, her eyes dropping as she held the book tighter to her chest. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, catching herself. “I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my?—”
“She did not want me,” he replied, cutting her off. He was surprised he’d said it. More surprised at how easily the confession had come to him.
Her eyes darted back to his with clear disbelief. He gave a little shrug, tensing at himself and the path of this conversation. He’d not thought about Damara much in nearly a hundred years—at least, not until he’d met Gwendolyn. Now she seemed to plague his thoughts like a deep scar.
“There are not very many who open themselves up to my kind,” he told her. “For good reason.”
Gwendolyn scowled, a fire burning behind her eyes at his self-deprecation. It made his chest tighten, even if he knew she was wrong to think what he’d said was anything but the truth.
Sirus turned and added several new logs to the dwindling fire at the edge of the room. When it was burning brightly again, he turned back to find Gwendolyn pensively standing behind a tall wingback chair nearby, her eyes lost in thought.
“She was stupid,” she declared flatly, as if she’d been trying to think of something else to say and that’s all she’d been able to come up with. There was a stern simpleness to the statement, and it made some primal corner of his chest swell over her protectiveness.
