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“Twice,” I say, never taking my eyes off her.
She’s nothing like I’d assumed.
Not a bloodsucking, emotionless succubus whose only care is her next feed.
Not a power-draining, evil-plotting tress, either.
“She risked her secret, one that will get her killed, to save us,” Jagger says, more like he’s speaking to himself. “I knew I felt connected to her,” he continues, shaking his head. “But this…”
He doesn’t finish. Probably doesn’t know how to finish.
I don’t either.
“We can’t make a plan until she’s awake,” I say.
Jagger looks at me. “Do you think she’ll try to run?”
I shrug. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she awoke and killed us both so her secret would die with us. But after going to such lengths to keep us alive, there’s no telling how she’ll react.
“I just hope she wakes soon,” I say, studying her.
Her eyes are moving beneath her closed lids, her forehead pinched like she’s being chased.
And I hate that I don’t know what she’s running from.
Chapter 20
Livana
“Tell me about your mother,” Ingle says, his fingertips trailing along the length of my arm as we lounge in bed. “You've never told me what she was,” he continues, flashing those pretty blue eyes downat me.
Hesitance clings to my insides. I've kept my secret my entire life. I've never told anyone what I really am, but Ingle...he's my Linked.
He met me a day after my eighteenth birthday, bought me a drink at the tavern I worked in. He’s a half-phoenix who’s funny and kind and handsome, and he’s easy to talk to. He’s the first real friend I've made in years, and despite telling him I never settle in one place for long, he stayed with me. Following me from town to town, never pushing me for answers as to why I move so much.
He knows I’m half-succubus, knew what would happen if he made the conscious decision to sleep with me three times. Knew that his life would be Linked to me forever and that he would crave my bite and my body to the point that he’d have withdrawals if he didn't get it regularly.
A dangerous concept, one I tried to talk him out of for weeks before I finally relented, seduced by the idea of not traveling this world alone.
“Why do you want to know so much?” I ask, doing my best to not let the question bother me. I’ve told him almost everything about my past, and it felt good to confide in someone, but I never told him what my mother was, what half ofmeis, out of fear. Cold and icy, ingrained in me since birth, fear.
“I'm your Linked,” he says, shifting on the bed to settle over me, planting kisses over my chest and neck and jawline. “I want to know everything about you.”
I swallow hard, trying my best to focus on the light, sweet touches he's giving me, but unable to shake a sense of foreboding gathering in my stomach. “What if you don't like what you hear?”
He pauses, looking up from where he hovers just above my chest and smiles at me. “That's not possible,” he says. “I like every single piece of you.” He continues his kissing, upping his pace as he showers me with attention.
Adrenaline seeps into my bloodstream, making my heart race. He's my first ever Linked and it’s still fairly new, but if there's anyone I can be honest with, isn't it him?
From everything I’ve learned about my species, Linked are loyal.
Still, every instinct in my body is screaming at me to not tell him.
I shake off the sensation, chalking it up to the fact that one of the lessons I remember most clearly from my father was to never, ever reveal what I was.
Ingle kisses me again, smiling at me before he hops off the bed. “I'm going to make you a snack, and then I'm going toravish you and then you can ravish me and we can start the process all over again.”
