Demon Night

do anything to provide—” He cut himself off, his jaw clamping shut. After a second, he added hoarsely, “You love me.”
    “Desperately.” Her head suddenly seemed too heavy for her neck muscles to support it, everything in her weak and tired, but she didn’t let her gaze waver from his. “I made arrangements with Jane. She’s going to send me some of Sammael’s blood every day.”
    He paled. “And I heard the reasons you gave to her. Are you telling me now it’s something different?”
    “Yes—”
    His eyes began glowing, and anger pushed color beneath his skin. “You don’t need his blood.”
    “I know,” she whispered, and almost couldn’t get the rest out. “I don’t need it. That’s why I’m going to use it. With your blood, everything’s mixed up. I need to un-mix it.”
    He stared at her, his throat working before he closed his eyes. “Why?”
    “Because everything you’ve given me has been wonderful, amazing—but you haven’t given me the one thing I need more than anything else. And I think that providing for me has gotten in the way of it.”
    Ethan flinched, his entire body flexing as if she’d hit him, and she had to cover her mouth to hold in everything she wanted to scream, to beg from him.
    He glanced up in that moment, and the stark pain on his features was frozen in place as he looked at her. She watched him study her wet cheeks, the hand she’d slapped over her lips.
    Slowly, his brows drew together. He clasped her fingers in his warm grip, pulled them away from her mouth, and asked softly, “What do you need, Miss Charlie?”
    She hadn’t known how to say it without asking for it. She hadn’t known until he’d looked at her as he would a puzzle. But now it was easy. She threaded her fingers through his, and said, “I need you to figure me out.”

CHAPTER 32
    He’d thought for certain she was chewing her arm off to escape, ripping out her heart—and his—in the process. But that apparently wasn’t it at all.
    It sure as hell didn’t bode well that he’d started out by jumping to the wrong conclusion, and Ethan was quiet as he followed her into the apartment, working it through.
    Whatever she needed had swelled up in her so hard that she’d had to physically force herself to hold it in. And whatever it was, she wasn’t going to name it or ask for it.
    She’d said once she was real easy to figure out. Just imagine me needy, then imagine me afraid of it.
    Ethan pondered that, but it didn’t help him for shit. He couldn’t imagine her needy, as he once had. Couldn’t imagine her clinging and begging for affection, so emotionally dependent that she couldn’t function without constant reassurance, asking him to coddle and soothe her every fear, until nothing existed between them but her need.
    That wasn’t Charlie. She’d likely still be standing on her feet long after the sun shriveled and the Earth stopped turning.
    Well, all right then. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy—and he’d take it slow, so as not to misstep. And if that didn’t work, he’d start throwing everything in the world at her feet until he stumbled on the correct thing.
    Or do both at once. Because he had his own powerful need, to simply be with her, and the sooner they each had what they wanted, the better off they’d both be.
    And Charlie didn’t appear too steady. Clutching his big shirt tightly around her body, she stood in her dining room, blinking as she looked around her. Her cheeks were still pink from Hell’s heat, but her disorientation didn’t seem to be left over from their trip. Her eyes were bright, but not glassy. Surprised, then, as if she’d forgotten the apartment was empty.
    Now, that was interesting. When she’d laid this on him out on the balcony, it had seemed as if she’d thought all of this through. But her decision to return to the apartment must have been an impulsive one, and made not long before Michael had shown up at the Brandts’—she hadn’t arranged for her return or brought any of her things over.
    “When exactly was it that you decided to un-mix?”
    Charlie glanced at him, and pushed her tangled hair back from her forehead. Her gaze slid down, landed somewhere beyond his feet. “When you said you’d piss yourself, and asked if I was all right.”
    And she’d been holding on to Jane. “How was that different from any other time I’ve done the same?”
    “Well,” she said, sweeping past him to pick up the potted cactus from