Stone Cold Touch

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_5e8d139f-a1f7-564b-a6c4-d260f95d6854)

Zayne stared back at me, momentarily obscured by a length of blond hair. I held my breath as he eased down on his side and tugged the covers up to his waist. My gaze dipped. He was wearing a gray cotton shirt and it stretched taut over his shoulders as he reached under the comforter, finding me in the bundle of blankets. With his arm around my waist, he snagged me back against his chest. Every muscle in my body tensed as he settled in behind me, curving his body around mine with a natural ease that scattered my senses. There was virtually nothing between us but our thin sleep clothes, which were no shield from the heat he radiated.

And that warmth...oh. It seeped into my muscles, easing out the knots and all the sore spots. Within seconds, the rigidness flowed out of my spine and my cheek returned to the pillow. The bed turned into a cloud and I felt as if I was in one of those cheesy mattress commercials Stacey and Sam always made fun of, but Zayne had the power to change an ordinary mattress into something wonderful. I closed my eyes, letting my body sink down. In the moments that followed, I wasn’t thinking about anything and that was great.

He lifted his hand from my waist long enough to brush strands of my hair out of his face and then I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck. A series of shivers danced over my skin. A different kind of tightness formed in my lower stomach as I focused on breathing normally and not as though I’d just attempted to run up and down bleachers.

It had been a long, long time since Zayne had done this—climbed into my bed to rest instead of taking a deep sleep. Not since we were much, much younger, when sharing a bed was harmless and innocent, and no one could get the wrong idea about it. Shock flickered through me. Especially after last night, I didn’t expect this from him. He’d sensed that I’d been close to caving to the need. Truthfully, he was in constant danger when he was around me. At any moment, I could roll over and our mouths would be centimeters apart. And it would be so easy to take his soul.

“How’s your arm?” he asked.

When he spoke, his voice rumbled through me. I cleared my throat and then winced at how abrasive it sounded. “It’s okay.”

“We should check it out later.” He shifted his arm and his hand ended up on my belly, just below my navel. I jerked back in surprise, but he didn’t pull away or move his hand. “It’s not why you didn’t go to school, then?”

Swallowing a sigh, I pried my eyes open. On the nightstand, the neon green lights showed 9:01 a.m. I should be on my way to bio at this point. “No.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Talking about Roth while lying in bed with Zayne was the last possible thing I ever wanted to do. “No.”

Silence fell between us as his chest rose and fell against my back in an even, deep rhythm. As relaxed as I was, my body was still hyperaware of his, of every breath he took and every tiny spasm of muscle. In the quiet, an ugly thought crept in. Had he lain like this with Danika? I had no right to the caustic burn of jealousy that invaded my blood, but it was there and it was wrong, because they were able to share more than I’d ever be able to share with him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking the words so quietly I wasn’t sure he’d said them at first.

I closed my eyes. “Why?”

There was another long stretch of silence and then he said, “I know you’re hurting and I want to kill the son of a bitch for that.”

My heart turned over heavily. There was no hiding anything from him. Zayne knew me better than I liked to acknowledge. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to strangle Roth and spin kick him in his junk, but I also had a sneaking suspicion that Zayne really, really wanted to act on his desire, and because I was a girl, I’d cry if Zayne did manage to kill him.

“He’s a demon,” Zayne said. “It doesn’t matter that there are moments when he’ll pull off acts of great compassion, because underneath it, he is what he is.”

I sucked my bottom lip in. “But that’s what I am.”

“No.” Zayne rose slightly, causing his hand to drag across my stomach to my hip. “You’re not just a demon, Layla. You’re also a Warden. It’s not like you can’t be both things and...”

“And?” I turned onto my back, resting on my elbows, and his hand ended up on my belly again, his long fingers reaching the band on my sleep shorts. Our gazes met. “And what?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead his gaze drifted over my face and then down, beyond the collar of my shirt. The blanket had slipped below my chest. He swallowed hard as he returned to lying on his side. His voice was thicker than normal when he spoke. “And why can’t you have the best of both worlds? Like the best qualities, you know?”

“Best qualities of both?” I murmured slowly. “You’re saying there are good qualities in demons?”

“In you.” The hollows of his cheeks flushed, and I blinked a couple of times, but the blush was slow to fade. “You’re part demon. Like I said that night at the ice-cream shop, we shouldn’t have made you hate that part of you.”

I remember him saying that. Those words had been lost in what else had happened that night—Paimon and the devil’s trap—but I remembered.

“Every part of you is good—even the demon side.” He paused. “And I saw you that night.”

Lying back, I drew in a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

He leaned over me and several locks of hair glided over his cheeks. “You didn’t look like us when you shifted, but you didn’t look like a demon either. You were a mixture of both.”

“So I looked like a freak?”

“No.” His hand moved and his fingers curved around my waist. “Your skin was black and gray, like mottled marble. It was beautiful. Best of both.”

A pleasant heat crept into my cheeks and I fought not to lower my gaze from the intensity in his. “You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

“What?”

“The ‘beautiful’ thing.”

His lips curled up at the corners in a small smile. “I have been.”

“You need your head checked?”

He rolled his eyes. “Anyway...” His thumb moved in slow, idle circles along my lower stomach. He seemed unaware of it, but then he chuckled softly. “I have no idea what we were talking about.”

I smiled. “We were talking about how awesome I am.”

“Sounds about right.” He settled back down and he seemed to be closer than before. The tops of his legs were pressed to the sides of my thighs. And his thumb was still tracing that unseen circle under my belly button, creating a languid warmth that was familiar.

“I was thinking,” I said finally, watching him. His eyes were closed and in that moment, he looked much younger than twenty-one.

There was a beat of silence. “About what?”

“About filling out those college applications and trying to see if I could get in for late admission.”

One eye opened and his thumb stilled. Several seconds passed. “Is it because of him?”

I opened my mouth.

“You know I’ve always supported you when it comes to going to college.” Both eyes were open now. “I think it would be great for you, but don’t make a huge decision like that because of what you’re feeling right now.”

I wanted to deny the assumption that my sudden interest in college had anything to do with Roth, but it would be a pitiful lie. Who was I kidding? Wasn’t like I hadn’t seriously considered leaving here and attending college before, but right now the idea was circling in my head for all the wrong reasons.

Zayne was staring at me now, eyes as bright as midday during the summer. Unrest made me twitchy. “Do you...?” He took a deep breath, and I held mine. “Did you love him, Layla?”

Oh God. My eyes widened and I could feel the heat in my cheeks grow. The question totally knocked me right off the planet.

He looked away and shook his head. “Shit, Layla-bug.”

“No!” I blurted out, and when his head swung back at me, my heart jumped in my throat. “I don’t know how I feel,” I rushed on, speaking the brutal truth. “I don’t know, Zayne. I care about him a lot and he...” I ached at the sudden knot in my throat. “I don’t know.”

And I really didn’t.

Love is a strange creature one thinks one has a grasp on and understanding of, only to discover later that it was only the barest taste of the real thing. And there were so many different kinds of love—that much I knew—and I didn’t know where Roth fell in all of that.