Her head jerked back.“No.”
“You made me think you wanted me, you…you enticed me, touched me, now you’re just not into it anymore?”
“A girl can change her mine, Silas.You got off, what’s the problem?”she said, her expression blank now.
Hurt, anger, embarrassment, it all throbbed through me.“Haven’t I paid for my mistake enough?Are you going to continue to punish me for kissing Uma, for a fucking eternity?”
“I told you, it’s not about Uma.I’m over that.”
“Then what is it?”I bit out, barely holding my emotions in check.
She narrowed her eyes at me.“Best you adjust your tone.”
“Ursula,” I said again as she strode from my room.
“Sleep it off.We have work to do in the morning.”
Then her door slammed after her, the loud metal slide of the lock engaging, letting me know in no uncertain terms to leave her alone.
I stood at my door, looking across to hers.I was still hard for her, while my heart was a shredded mess in my chest.
I’d fucked everything up between us again, and this time, I had no idea how.
Ten
Ursula
I hissedout a breath through my clenched teeth, furious with myself.What the hell was wrong with me?I couldn’t believe I’d allowed things to go that far.I’d jeopardized our chances in this tournament, and for what?Nothing.Not a single fucking thing, that’s what.
Finding out he was all set for an arranged mating before he was cast out of Heaven, had stunned me.The thought of him with someone else had struck me hard, but worse, that he’d resigned himself to living such a cold, loveless existence, that he would have accepted that for himself, had shaken me to my core—when it shouldn’t have.
When I’d asked him how he felt about it now, about living a life like that, now that the option had been taken from him, he’d struggled to answer.How could he not know?How could he not wholeheartedly reject it?He lived with the knights, every day he saw true love and happiness, yet he still couldn’t say it.He couldn’t bring himself to reject the hollow existence that had been expected of him and there was an obvious reason for that, one I’d tried repeatedly to ignore.
I shook my head in disbelief, at my own foolishness.Three years ago, I’d told myself that he wasn’t like the rest of his brethren, that he was different.Yes, I’d known he was cold and, like the rest of them, had mastered his emotions to a degree I could never understand, but I’d convinced myself that perhaps he saw showing emotion or allowing himself to express his true feelings as some kind of failing.
I’d been so fucking wrong.
Deep down, I’d known it when I’d taken him to my bed back then, but I’d wanted to be wrong so badly that I allowed myself to believe the delusion I’d created.Lucifer once told me that angels are all but empty vessels, created only to convey God’s love and compassion, His wrath and justice, but not their own, never their own.I assumed he meant that angels just locked it all down, always putting God’s will before their own.
I’d been so desperate to prove Lucifer wrong, I’d convinced myself that I could force Silas to lower his guard, to show me how he truly felt.It never happened, because it was an impossibility.Silas hadn’t rejected his old life when I’d asked him about it, because he couldn’t imagine one that was anything else.He didn’t see the love the knights had for their mates, because he wasn’t capable of it.
I’d walked in here tonight, and allowed him to play me again.He’d tried to make me believe that I was the one who’d had him rethinking his convictions three years ago, that I was the reason he’d began to reject what was expected of him—that I’d been important to him.
And when he’d aimed those intense silver eyes on me, I’d momentarily doubted everything I knew about this male, and surrendered to the need for him, burning inside me.
You undo me.I am lost in your hands.I am lost, my perfect, precious Ursula.
He’d called me precious, and I’d fallen for it.I’d allowed my longing for him to override commonsense and for the first time since everything fell apart between us, I’d reached out, I’d sought out his emotions again.I’d slipped through his defenses with my powers, searching, hoping—and once again, felt nothing.
Nothing.
I wasn’t precious to him, not even close.Even as I’d touched him, as he’d kissed me, nothing stirred inside him.He was utterly unmoved.The things he’d said to me were just the mutterings of a male desperate to get off for the first time in three years—though that was probably a lie as well—using words he didn’t actually feel to keep me right where he wanted me.
He was still that empty vessel, even now long after his fall.
I’d told myself over and over that he hadn’t fought for me three years ago because he hadn’t truly cared, but deep down, I didn’t want to believe it.I hadn’t wanted to believe that he was like the rest.There was a good reason I’d built thick walls around myself.I’d gotten caught up and forgotten the lessons I’d brutally learned a long time ago.I was just some Hell-spawned creature he wanted to take a walk on the wild side with.A cold experiment?An oddity?A way to pass the time?
He’d been a self-serving, emotionless drone for thousands of years.A short fling with me sure as fuck didn’t have the ability to change him.He was still that angel, who had once been prepared to live a joyless, sexless mating for an eternity—a vessel to enact someone else’s will.