Free Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade) by Stephanie Rowe

The way his eyes had fastened on her... Her head started to spin and she bent over, putting her head between her knees. “I can’t deal with this.”
    Gideon shifted, setting his hand on her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Sure you can.” His voice was quiet and confident, his touch warm and reassuring. “You think he wants you, or the stone?” he asked, continuing his urgent questioning.
    She closed her eyes and concentrated on his touch, letting it ground her. God, it had been years since someone had given her physical comfort. It made her want to crawl into his lap and give up all pretense of being able to cope. To let someone else take care of her. For a day. Or even an hour. Just to be able to stop fighting for a minute...but it wasn’t an option. Not now. She clenched her fists and willed herself to be strong. “I don’t have the stone, so I’d have to think he wants me specifically.”
    “Why?”
    She winced as the tires squealed, but Gideon kept her anchored against him, and she barely slid in the seat. “Because of my charming personality, of course. Why else?” No way was she going to admit who she was to them. Never could a Calydon be trusted with the truth of what she was. Never.
    His soft chuckle made her belly curl. “Why else, indeed?”
    “Seriously, I don’t know. I don’t know why Nate kept me, either, but he had a reason. I tried to find out, but he kept his secrets locked up.” Lily had some ideas, but she wasn’t about to share them with Calydons she couldn’t trust. “He had big plans, and I think Frank is trying to take over now that Nate’s dead.” She felt the truck tip again, and she sucked in her breath. “We’re going to die right now, aren’t we?”

CHAPTER FIVE
    “You might, but we’re immortal.”
    She glared at Gideon. “What kind of comfort is that?”
    He grinned and brushed his thumb over her cheek, an affectionate, playful gesture that seemed so incongruous for the situation they were in and for the power of the man who’d done it. “Just trying to distract you. The time to worry about dying is after you’ve beaten death, not when you’re about to take it on.”
    She blinked as panic surged through her. “We’re really about to take death on? I thought you were exaggerating.” She moaned and bent over to the floor again as the interior of the truck started spinning again. “You couldn’t have told me that later , and just let me be mad at you right now?”
    “I can see down your shirt.”
    Sudden heat flared through Lily, and she sat up, holding the collar of her shirt against her chest. “Letch.” But she didn’t feel like he was a letch. She felt dangerously tempted by his comment, by the way his gaze roamed over hers. Her response to him was so unfamiliar, unsettling. She’d spent her entire life being careful to hold all Calydons at bay and suppress her magic’s response to them. Having a Calydon look at her as a woman had always made her uncomfortable, and for good reason. But her response to Gideon was like a raging inferno he was stoking with each look, each comment, each touch.
    It was terrifying to feel herself respond to him, but at the same time he made her want more. Which she couldn’t do. Ever. No matter how heroic Gideon had been thus far, he would never be able to handle who she was. She had a sudden vision of Gideon caught up on the high of her power, and she went cold. A warrior with Gideon’s power would destroy her. It would be a thousand times worse than before—
    Gideon gripped her tighter as the truck bounced high over a rut. “I could distract you with sex.”
    Lily swallowed at the pulse of desire that coursed through her and the sudden clenching of her belly. How was it possible that those words didn’t make her run screaming from him? Her mind logically knew she should be afraid, but her body didn’t. Why? She didn’t understand, and it scared her to think that Gideon could strip away the years of