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“Ezra,” she repeated, voice soft and seeking, drawing my attention to her face again. “What’s happening? I feel something else.”

“Nothing to concern yourself with.” I tried to avoid sounding harsh, but it took all of my mental faculties to keep my shadows from breaking through.

I withdrew my fingers and lifted my hand. They glistened with the very essence I wanted to taste.

I was so preoccupied with the urge to lick my fingers and the strain of controlling my shadows that when her hand grazed my cock through my pants, I couldn’t prevent her touch.

“Stop,” I said through gritted teeth, hissing when she squeezed my cockhead. “Now, Raelynn.”

She released me and stared in confusion. “Don’t you need to…”

Why did she want to provide me with relief? I wasn’t inebriated or uncomfortable to the point of pain.

I understood the physical attraction she experienced for me, but I also understood she didn’t want me.

“I’ll be fine.”

She slid up the bed to sit and stared at me without a word.

“Why won’t you let me help you?”

Unable to walk away as I desired, thanks to my shadows’ protests at the mere idea of being away from her, I entertained her query with my own. “Why do you wish to?”

“Because you helped me.”

Ah, Raelynn, the altruist.

“And do you offer to stroke the cock of any man who helps you?”

Her eyes rounded, taken aback by my forward question. Her apple scent faded as her arousal waned at my boorish words.

I knew she offered no such thing. I’d learned enough about her in our short time together to understand her desire to help others never came at the cost of her own morality.

But I needed to push her away. I didn’t need her to believe something could exist between us.

She crossed her arms and gave me a flat look. “You’re not Cyn.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t talk like that. Cyn does.”

I almost laughed.

The woman didn’t know me—and yet it seemed she knew me well enough to call me out on my poor attempt at pushing her away.

It wasn’t that I wouldn’t use crass language with her. Under normal circumstances, I would never imply her involvement with another man like this. I wouldn’t bait her like a juvenile.

I hated that my body betrayed me. My shadows fought my control, and the thought of losing that control filled me with dread, akin to a living nightmare.

I didn’t need my cock stroked. I needed something more.

“You want to help me?”

She swallowed hard when I looked her in the eye. From the moment we met, I sensed a need in her that mirrored my own. Something far beyond carnal desire.

I saw it in her eyes now. I also noticed the shift in her scent and the way her breathing quickened in anticipation.

My shadows recognized the change and stirred, a subtle shift I could manage without losing control of them.