My anger rises up again, and not even entirely at him, but at the tangled web we’re caught in, because I feel so robbed. Robbed of something…something that could’ve been mine.
A lump rises in my throat, and no matter how many times I try to gulp it down, I can’t. “You shouldn’t touch me,” I confess, even as my gloved hands curve around his shoulders. “I’m dangerous.”
His eyes sparkle with amusement, crinkling at the edges, making him look so much younger, so much less hindered and gruff. “You look it.” I scowl at him, but that just seems to entertain him even more as he walks me up the stairs.
“I am dangerous,” I insist, though maybe my declaration is a bit discredited at the moment. “Well…maybe not right now, since I’m depleted. And not at night, since my power doesn’t work then, and not—”
“So your power does only work during the day? I thought so.”
I press my lips together, internally kicking myself, but it’s too late. I was right not to trust myself right now. Not just with my emotions, but apparently my secrets too. Although, he already knows the main ones, and he hasn’t revealed me. Yet.
A ball of worry rolls around in my gut. “Are you going to use that information against me?”
Rip looks down at me as he continues to walk, his aura thrumming around him like a syrupy murk.
His beard is thicker again like it was when I first met him, rather than the stubble that he goes back and forth with. The black hair over his pale jaw makes me want to reach up and touch it, just to see what it feels like. Is he sharp even there? Or is it softer, like the ruffled hair on his head seems to be?
Despite the fact that he’s walking at a brisk pace, he’s not jarring me in his arms. His movements are fluid and graceful, not at all what you’d expect by looking at him. But Rip has always been unexpected. Like when he replies, “My intention is never to use you, Goldfinch.”
For a moment, I can’t say anything. My hands tighten ever so slightly on his shoulders, a nervousness braced from my body to his. “You know, I think I believe you. Even though I shouldn’t.”
I feel the slightest bit of tension loosen from his bunched muscles. “Yes, you should.”
One of my ribbons slips from its bow, the golden length looping around his arm, and an entirely too pleased look crosses his face. “Your ribbons seem to like me.”
“Well, they don’t have brains, so…”
The richest, deepest laugh I’ve ever heard lumbers through him and wraps around me. I almost lean toward the sound, like I want to bury myself beneath its bark.
Dangerous. I know this is dangerous, to be this close to him, especially in my current state. I’m not equipped, my walls not erected, and I need those walls to keep from toppling right into him.
So with a lot of willpower, I force myself to look away, breaking the heady connection with a tug on my ribbon.
As soon as I cut myself off from him, from the moment, I hear him sigh, chest rising and falling beneath my shoulder and carrying his breath of disappointment. “Which rooms are yours?”
Of course he needs to know that, but I feel suddenly shy to tell him.
Sensing my hesitation, he says, “Mine are on this level on the opposite side, with the snowflake door.”
I pretend not to soak up that information. “Just down this hall and up one more flight of stairs. It’s the door across from Midas’s.”
Almost there, and then I can shut myself away and hide from the way Rip affects me.
“Hmm.”
My eyes cut up. “What does that hmm mean?”
He ignores my question as he turns in the direction of my rooms. “Why is your power depleted?” he asks instead.
Always this back and forth that we fall into, of flinging questions at each other and hardly catching answers.
He’s tense beneath my ear, but the leather shirt he’s wearing is supple, much softer than I would’ve guessed. “Because I used too much of it,” I find myself saying quietly.
“And Midas drove you to this point?”
“He has a reputation to uphold as the Golden King,” I say with far too much bitterness slipping off my tongue.
Rip seems to catch the taste, biting down so hard that I hear his teeth grind. “You shouldn’t let him use your power anymore.”
The judgment in his tone makes me go tense. “You don’t understand,” I say, my mind immediately snagging onto Digby. “I have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he retorts. His aura pulses again, but this time, it’s erratic, irritated. Well, that makes two of us, because I know what I’m doing, and this playacting at obedience is necessary.