Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade) (20 page)

Somehow, Lily had faced the worst, and still found a way to keep her heart open. Unlike Gideon, who lived in a cold shell of survival, Lily wasn’t afraid to feel pain, to offer herself to love, or to set herself up for hurt. Lily lived and experienced life with every last bit of her soul, and that is why she was standing before him, in his arms, showering him with the gift of feeling and living for the first time in five hundred years.

No wonder Gideon’s shields hadn’t been able to hold up to protect him from feeling Lily’s emotions. She was so powerful that nothing would ever hold her down. “God, I admire you.”

Lily smiled and snuggled closer to him, her breath hot through his tee shirt. “I don’t need much,” she said, “and I’ve worked hard to be independent, but I’ll admit that I’m at the end of my resources. I want to feel safe, Gideon, even if it’s just for a day.” She slipped her arms around his waist, her touch tentative and unbelievably vulnerable. “It feels good to be with you, Gideon. You make me feel safe.”

“Me?” He wrapped his hand around the back of her head, sinking his fingers into her tresses as he brushed his lips over her silky soft hair. He was raging with the need to kiss her, to fill her with his passion, chasing away all the memories of the hell she’d faced, so all she would ever think of again was how it would feel to be with a man who treasured everything about her very soul. “How is it possible that I make you feel safe? You know what I am. You’re insane, aren’t you?” he murmured. “That has to be it.”

She lifted her face to look at him, and he saw true fear in her eyes. Not fear
of
him. Fear she was sharing
with
him. “I’ve spent my life researching you. Researching Calydons.” Lily didn’t pull away or even hint at retreating. “I understand you, Gideon. By killing Cade and my grandmother, you saved my mother’s life. Trig’s, too.”

Gideon frowned, listening to her repeat the words he lived by. That all the lives he took were justified for the greater good. People outside the Order never understood that, certainly not when he was taking the lives of people they loved. How was it possible that a woman who’d suffered so much violence understood him?

“No matter how it happens,” Lily said, her voice clear and true, “you’re true to your mission to protect innocents. There is honor in that.” Her fingers dug into his hips, keeping him close. “My brother was a Calydon. He was a good person. I loved him with all my heart. I knew he was strong, he was good, and he was honorable, even though he was also burdened by being Calydon. Like you are. I wanted to hate you. I did. I tried.” Lily met his gaze. “But you’re like my brother. You do horrible, horrible things without remorse, but you have honor.”

Gideon tangled his fingers in her hair, knowing he should stop her and tell her about the mark, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. For this one moment, he wanted her to look at him like he wasn’t a demon, because she made him almost feel human when she looked at him like that, and that was a gift.

Because he was a monster. Yeah, sure, he’d tried to atone for it over the last five hundred years, but he
knew
he was. The instant Lily realized she was bound to him, she’d know it, too. She’d never again look at him the way she was right now: with trust, with tenderness and with desire so pure and so intense that it brought everything inside him to a roaring crescendo.

Gideon felt something flicker inside him at the honesty on her face, at her belief in him, calling upon the one thing he didn’t have, would never have, and had spent his life trying to make up for. “Lily, I don’t have honor—”

“You do—”

“No.” Gideon ground his jaw, unable to accept her accolades when he knew what a bastard he was. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t deceive her. Not anymore.

It was time to show her the truth about what he was.

Silently, Gideon took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm, keeping his gaze fastened on her eyes. Then he took her sleeve and gently pushed it up her arm, knowing that everything would change between them the minute she saw the mark. Lily could forgive him for killing a grandmother she’d never met, because of her love for her brother. She could forgive Gideon for almost draining her dry, because she took responsibility. But she’d never forgive being bonded to him. Not with her history. It would be too personal to her.

Which was fine.

He wasn’t going to forgive himself either. He should have known. Somehow, someway, he should have known and prevented it. That was his duty, to protect her, and the only way to keep her safe would have been to keep the bond from beginning. He’d failed once, and he’d failed a second time with her.

The sleeve was up, baring Lily’s arm, and Gideon laid his hand over the mark, her skin pulsing with the warmth of his brand.

Question flickered in Lily’s eyes, and she glanced down at her arm, but he was covering it.

He felt her body tense, and she sucked in her breath. Her hand shaking, she peeled his fingers off, and he allowed her to move his hand.

Yes, you can
.

She moaned and held her forehead with her hands.
You can hear my thoughts now.

We were both resisting so hard before that we were blocking our connection. It’s open now.
Gideon’s arms went around her and he pulled her onto his lap.

Lily tried to shove off him. “Let me go!”

He tightened his grip and kept her locked against him. “No.”

“Gideon—”

“I don’t even know the name of my first
sheva.
” His voice was quiet, so quiet that she had to stop struggling to hear his words. “I was walking down the street with Dante and two other Order members. We were going to get food.” He snorted in disgust. “Food. So mundane. So innocuous.”

“Let go of me,” Lily whispered, her fingers sliding around his wrists to try to pry his arms off her. “I know the story.” She didn’t want to hear it again. She didn’t want to hear how he stood back and let that innocent girl be killed. She didn’t want to hear how he was going to do it again, this time to her.

“Listen to me, Lily. I need you to hear this.” Gideon’s voice was raw, and bitter, and she shivered at the harsh edge to it. “I need you to hear the story from my point of view. You’re locked into me now, and you need to know the type of male you’re burdened with.”

She hesitated, realizing she wasn’t going anywhere until he released her. And a part of her wanted to know. From him. She sighed and stopped fighting, but she couldn’t relax, not with his powerful arms wrapped around her with such unyielding strength. “What happened?”

“I saw her across the street,” Gideon said, gazing at the wall as if he were reliving the moment in his head. “She was walking with two friends. I think she was maybe eighteen, if that. I was nineteen, and I’d come into my powers only a few weeks before. I was reeling with my new powers, and Dante was having difficulty controlling me. My muscles were twice the size they’d been before my change, and I was getting stronger every day.”

Lily said nothing. She knew all about the transition. About the dream the young Calydons had where they were fighting for their lives in a battle on another plane. If they survived the dream, they woke up with their brands. If they didn’t, they died in their sleep. Trig had died. Despite her spending her whole life searching for ways to ensure he survived his dream, he’d died.

“I saw her,” Gideon continued, “and I knew instantly that she was my
sheva
. I wanted her so badly, but it wasn’t just sex. I needed to protect her, to hold her, to bring her into my world and make her mine.”

Lily’s jaw tightened as jealousy slammed into her. “I don’t want to know—”

“I could have kept walking,” Gideon continued relentlessly. “No one else saw her. I could have walked past her that day and let her disappear. I knew the implications, but I thought she was so beautiful and I wanted her to see me. See my muscles. Feel my power. I wanted to see her face light up in awe for who I was. So I crossed the street and introduced myself.” His arms tightened around Lily, and he pressed his face into her hair before continuing.

Lily felt a small ache in her chest, and her grip on his wrist softened. “Gideon? Are you okay?”

He lifted his head from her hair. “Dante followed me over there, and the minute she smiled at me, I went down on my knees. Literally. She knocked me over with her voice.” His voice grew harder. “Dante grabbed her in one hand and me in the other and carted us both around the corner into an alley. He threw me down on my ass and told me I was a total fuckup and I’d better turn out all right or he’d be making the wrong choice. Then he called out his spear and he killed her.”

Her forearms searing hot in response to his confession and torment, Lily twisted out of his grip to face him. His eyes were haunted, his face tight. Where was the cold, stoic warrior who’d been unaffected by his
sheva’s
death? It had been a lie. All this time, he’d been living a lie, and she’d bought it.

He glanced at her, then averted his eyes and leaned back against the bathroom wall, his arms draped over his knees. “She looked at me the split second before Dante’s blade sank into her and she said ‘Why?’. That was her last word. Why.” He met Lily’s gaze, and she saw the coldness in his eyes that he was so well-known for, the detachment that she now knew was simply a shield. “The answer to her question was because I was too fucking arrogant to keep walking when I should have.”

“Gideon—”

“Dante handed her body to me, and he told me I’d better make myself worthy, because an innocent had died to keep me alive. Then he left.” A muscle ticked in Gideon’s cheek. “I held her for the next ten hours. I just stood there in that alley, with this dead girl in my arms, and I couldn’t move.”

Tears began to sting at the back of Lily’s eyes for his pain, even though his eyes were hard, and his body was rigid. He believed he felt no pain, he’d erected a shield around himself for five hundred years, but she knew all too well that that kind of anguish never left. It was always inside, fermenting and poisoning.

“Quinn and Elijah, who were rookies with me at the time, came back and found me. I was covered in her blood. Together, we buried her. We sat on her grave for six days. All three of us. They knew I would have killed myself if they’d left. So they didn’t. They stayed with me, until they finally helped me realize that the only appropriate response was to make her death worthwhile.” Gideon’s fingers traced the inside of his wrist.

Lily saw he was rubbing a small scar on his skin, and she knew that Calydons scarred only from other Calydon weapons.

“I cut myself and bled onto her grave. I swore on her death that I would never waiver in my Oath to protect innocents against rogue Calydons. I promised her that I would be worthy of her death, that thousands of lives would be saved because she sacrificed her life.” His gaze flicked to Lily. “And then we got up, and we never talked about it again.” His eyes grew bitter. “And the legend of Gideon was born.”

She moved between his knees, and he let her, his hands finding her hips, palming her waist.

His gaze went to her. “And now, I have another
sheva
. Another responsibility to carry. Another choice to make.”

Lily didn’t need to ask what he was going to do. She already knew. His need for her was burning in those blue eyes, in the fierceness of voice. He hadn’t walked away from his
sheva
before, and he wasn’t going to now. He was going to keep her, devil be damned.

Gideon’s grip tightened on her hips. “I can’t stand back and let you die. There’s no
fucking
way.” His chest expanded with a deep breath. “But if I end up going rogue or dying because of the bond, or even just fuck up the one thing I truly care about, which is to keep innocents safe from rogue Calydons, then I’ve violated my promise to a dead girl whose name I don’t even know. How do I make that choice?” He lifted his hand to her hair and fisted the strands. “Hell, Lily. I’m not prepared for this. I’m not prepared for
you
.”

Lily braced her hands against the rough cotton of his shirt, feeling the thud of his heart against her palms. It was a steady, strong beat, but it was uneven. Irregular. Damaged. “I’m not prepared for you, either.”

Gideon pulled her closer. His mouth was inches from hers, heat rising furiously between them. “I don’t know what to do.”

His confession was so raw and desperate, she knew only tremendous pain would have prompted him to admit something like that, and suddenly she felt so ashamed for all the horrible things she’d written about him in her articles. For her accusations of how cold and brutal he was. She lifted her face to his. “I’m sorry for judging you.”