Every Last Breath - Armentrout Jennifer L.. Страница 45

“Well, that’s not really helping me.”

His eyes narrowed, and I realized my lame attempt at humor had pretty much swan-dived down the stairs. “Do you think this is a joke?”

“No,” I muttered, starting to lose my patience.

He stepped forward, a muscle throbbing along his jaw. “You risked too much, Layla. You—”

“I wasn’t going to risk you!” I shouted, my control stretching and then snapping. I stepped forward, planting my hands on his chest and shoving hard. He stumbled back only half a step. “Do you understand that? I had to go down there to help Sam, but I was not going to risk you and I wouldn’t go back and change that if I could. Sorry! You can be mad all you want.”

“I’m pissed off because I love you, Layla, and the idea of losing you fucking terrifies me!”

“And I wasn’t going to chance losing you! Because I love you, you annoying, self-important and overcontrolling—”

Roth shot forward, clasping my wrists in his. Pressing me back against the wall, he pinned my hands above my head. Our bodies were flushed, and my heart pounded erratically as he dipped his head.

Roth’s mouth was on mine, and it was a raw kiss, one that brooked no room for denial. Not that I could ever want to deny him. The kiss was almost too powerful, too primitive. It ripped open the ball of dread that rested low in my belly, because it was the kind of kiss wrought from the fear of losing someone, and that made our situation all the more real.

It made what I had done all the more painful.

I kissed him back, just as hungrily and just as demanding. He gave. I took. And as we clutched at each other, I knew that there was more love in his words than there had been anger.

After what felt like forever, he lifted his mouth from mine. Resting our foreheads together, he kept his hands over my wrists. He was breathing heavily, and I could feel his heart racing against my chest.

“I can’t lose you,” he said in a hoarse mutter, his voice twisting up my insides. “I can’t.”

“You won’t,” I whispered back, but those two words rang empty to me, even after what Grim had told me. “Are you still mad at me?”

His breath was warm on my lips. “I still want to strangle you.” He paused. “But in the most loving way possible.”

I pressed my lips together. “Okay then.”

Roth’s lips brushed over my brow, and then he was stepping back, his hands trailing off my wrists and down my arms. His movements were stiff as he turned to the stairs, and while I could tell most of the anger had faded away, it wasn’t completely gone.

He started up the stairs, and after taking a couple deep breaths, I followed him. We didn’t talk on the way up to his loft or when we stepped inside. He slammed the door shut behind us. “Bambi. Off.”

The familiar left my skin immediately, and instead of floating toward him, the shadow darted under the bed.

“I think you hurt her feelings,” I said, facing him. “And you failed to mention to me that the familiars are actually people. That’s a pretty big thing to forget, you know, that you have a grown woman crawling around on your skin.”

He stopped, both brows raised. “Are you jealous? Because you have a guy on you right now.”

I shuddered. “Thanks for reminding me of that.”

He stared at me. “Seriously? You’re not jealous, are you?”

Sighing, I walked over to the bench in front of the piano and plopped down. “At first, yeah, I was.

But then I realized how stupid that was. And besides, she apparently has the hots for Zayne.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Bambi’s always had bad taste.”

My lips pursed. “You could’ve told me.”

Roth shot me a dark look as he crossed the room. “To be honest, it hadn’t crossed my mind. Silly me for thinking there’d be no chance of you taking a stroll through Hell.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Bambi made it sound like you let her take that form while she’s topside.”

“Sometimes.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Not often enough that it’s something I think about.”

“Still, it would’ve been handy to know. Imagine my surprise when they just popped right off me.” I reached down, to where Robin was curled along my hip. “I don’t think they like each other. All they did was argue.” I glanced at the bed. “I really do think she’s hiding.”

“Of course she is,” he replied, eyeing the bed with a mixture of fondness and irritation. “She knew you were going down there, or at least suspected it. She should’ve stopped you.”

I rested my hands on my knees, meeting his hard gaze. “When I said I was sorry, I meant it. I didn’t know Cayman was going to distract you in that manner. I punched him, if that makes you feel any better.”

He arched a brow, looking unappeased.

I went on. “But I had to try to help Sam. I had to.”

Roth was silent for a long moment and then he exhaled loudly. “You saw Grim? Did you get what you were looking for?”

“I got a whole lot of what I wasn’t looking for,” I said, sliding my palms along my knees. “He told me what the Wardens were before—who they were.”

“Heavenly rejects,” he said, his face impassive. “It was never my story to tell. I wasn’t even sure you’d believe me if I did.”

“In the beginning? Probably not,” I admitted, and then forged on. “He told me that some of them were never awakened, that they are still encased in stone. I never knew that. Did you?”

Roth shook his head. “I had heard rumors, but some gargoyles are just stone carvings and nothing more.”

“He also told me about Lilith. That she was never a demon.”

His brows furrowed. “I think he was messing with you, Layla. Lilith is a demon.”

I shook my head tiredly, and then explained everything that Grim had told me about Lilith. I saw the moment when Roth believed me, when I told him how the Boss had covered it up. “So, I feel like a demon. So did Lilith, but only because no one knew what we really were, and I guess with the Boss telling everyone that she was one, no one thought to question it. People see what they want to see.

Even demons, I guess.”

Roth had moved closer to me as I told him what Grim said, but now he knelt in front of me.

“You’re not a demon.”

“No. Not according to Grim, and it makes sense. You know, how the demons could never sense me in the beginning, not until recently—not until the witches gave me what they did.” Understanding flared deep in his eyes, and seeing that made it easier to tell him what else I’d learned. “They gave me the blood of one of the original fallen angels. The same thing they’d given Lilith. That’s why I look different now when I shift. I guess it overcame whatever Warden blood I had in me. And ever since then, I don’t have the same urges to...to feed. It’s still there, but it’s nothing like before. I don’t need anything to ease it. I can ignore it. Anyway, good news is, I’m kind of immortal, so you don’t need to worry about me looking like your grandmother one day.”

He stared up at me in silence for a long moment and finally, when I started to worry, he said, “I fail to see where there is any bad news involved in what you’ve just told me.”

I almost smiled. “Well, I’m kind of a bigger freak than you thought I was in the beginning.”

“I don’t care if you grow a third boob when you shift or if you are part Hellion,” he said fervently.

“Or if three days a month you end up needing to consume the flesh of the dead.”

Um. That was hard-core.

“I’m going to love you all the same.” He placed his hands over mine. “But knowing that I’m not going to have to make some crazy deal in the future to prevent you from dying of old age on me is the icing on my cake, babe.”

I couldn’t even stop the smile from tugging at my lips. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? You really would make a deal?”

His gaze was steady. “I would do anything for you.”