"With those covers up to your chin and your eyes so wide, you look very young."
"I guess that makes you the would-be pedophile."
He inclined his head. "Considering our age difference and all the things I intend to do to you, it does indeed." Then he became serious. "Kitten, underneath your sarcasm, indifference, and outright anger, I think you still want me, else I wouldn't have insisted on this. I admit to being a ruthless, manipulating bastard, just as you said, but I'm not a ra**st. If you truly don't want me, I'll let you alone, but tomorrow I'll still change you like I promised."
He paused. Dropped the curl he'd been toying with and cupped my face. "Yet I will do my best to persuade you otherwise. I have absolutely no qualms about that."
Oh no, was my thought. I'm a goner. Think about the junkyard. That smell. Gregor's sneer. Anything but the fact that he's now undoing his pants.
There was one thing guaranteed to douse my mood. "Why did you cheat on me, Bones?"
He stopped. His top button was undone, but the zipper stayed up.
"You truly believe I was unfaithful?"
A rude snort came from me. "After seeing pictures, then Fabian's report, Cannelle's reminiscing, and hearing you admit it that night Geri pulled you out of New Orleans, yeah. I do."
His gaze felt like it was drilling into the back of my head. "You saw pictures of me entering my home with women, but you didn't see what happened once the door shut. I'd gone to New Orleans under the pretense that I was celebrating my bachelorhood, hoping Gregor would take the bait. He did. Even sent Cannelle there, as if I were too stupid not to smell him on her. It was easy to drink her blood and convince her to report back to Gregor that I was defenseless in my debauchery. By the time Fabian confronted me, several of Gregor's spies were around. What was I supposed to say to him?"
My mind reeled. "But I heard you. You told Cannelle she'd picked all the women the two of you had f**ked together!"
"And she believed that," Bones replied. "I let her pick a new human girl each night to take back to my house. Then I drank the pair of them into insensibility and had them wake up naked together. It was a simple deception. I know what it would have looked like to you, Kitten, but you should have let me explain what it was, instead of going off with Tepesh."
My emotions warred with my suspicion. I mean, what woman, after everything I'd seen and heard, would believe it was all an elaborate charade, and her lover had been only fake cheating?
"But you left me." I couldn't keep the pain out of my voice. "You said you were through."
Bones sighed. "I went mad when I discovered you'd gone to Gregor. Didn't know if you'd choose to stay with him out of love, or you'd be forced to - and neither idea made me rational. By the time you'd returned, I still hadn't gotten control of myself. One of the reasons I left was because if I didn't, I'd have said more things I regretted. Then I went to New Orleans to end this issue with Gregor, intending to sort things out with you afterward, but you jumped the gun." Again, his tone implied.
"By rescuing you?"
He gave me an exasperated look. "Did you forget I could fly? Gregor knew that. So did Marie. She wanted me to slaughter Gregor, so she told Gregor she intended to force me from the Quarter, knowing full well Gregor would realize either he had to come in and get me or I'd fly out to safety. But you sent your old team after me, which Gregor would have soon been alerted to no matter how covert they were. I knew they'd get themselves killed if I resisted and gave Gregor time to storm in, so I let them take me. But it ruined my plan."
Bones didn't say the other, obvious word: Again. Oh shit. If a hole had appeared in the ground, I'd have gladly crawled into it. Spade's right, you are an idiot. With a capital I.
My mental flogging must have gotten through to him, because he said, "You're not an idiot. Charles told me he dragged you into it, though he of all people should have known better. Still, he'd have said trapping Gregor alone was too risky, which is why I didn't tell him about it."
"You must hate me," I said with a groan. "That's twice I've f**ked things up while thinking I was helping."
His brow arched. "Three times, actually. You also left me to go off with Don, thinking you were helping me. I thought all of these showed your lack of respect for me by not letting me fight my own battles, but I've come to realize you can't help yourself. It's who you are. You will never sit and wait for the outcome of a fight involving someone you love before throwing yourself into the mix, no matter how you might promise to change."
His words were like a knife in my heart. This is why he left, my conscience taunted me. You'd like to think it was just so he could f**k around, because then it would be his fault, not yours. But it was you. Bones is right; you'll never change. And no one in their right mind would put up with you.
Saying I was sorry was useless. More than useless - insulting, considering everything that had happened. So I did the only thing I could do to show how much I wished things were different. I dropped my shields, opening my mind to let Bones hear everything I was feeling, stripping myself naked of all the things I normally used to rationalize my actions.
He closed his eyes. A ripple went through him, as if my thoughts struck him like a physical blow. Once freed of the tight restraint I kept on them, everything seemed to tumble out of me, with long-hidden emotions frothing to the surface.
"Kitten," he murmured.
"I just wanted you to know I understand." The lump in my throat made it hard to speak. "You gave it your best, Bones. I'm the one who trashed things."
His eyes opened. "No. It was my insistence in taking Gregor on alone that caused our separation. I could have told you it was a trap before putting you into that panic room. I could have told you about New Orleans and had you take those pills, so Gregor couldn't learn it from your dreams. But I wanted to handle everything myself. My pride and my jealousy drove us apart. Every mistake you've made with me, Kitten, I've made the same with you, but I don't want to talk about that anymore. I don't want to talk at all."
He drew down his zipper even as I blinked in shock. "After all this, you still want to sleep with me?"
Bones slid out of his pants. He didn't have anything on under them, as usual.
"After all this, I still love you."
That stunned me into silence. Then I spoke the first words that came into my mind.
"You must be crazy."
He laughed, soft and wry. "It was your brash bravery that made me fall in love with you in the first place. Even though the same thing drives me mad now, I probably wouldn't love you if you were different than the way you are."