The ​Other Half of the Grave (The Night Huntress 1,1) 96% 10 csillagozás

“I’m not a virgin,” she countered.
Insane jealousy slammed him, until he couldn’t think past the need to kill any man who’d touched her. Right then, he was every inch the monster she’d repeatedly accused him of being.

“Crispin.” Charles’s tone changed from loud shock to the softer, calm one he normally reserved for people teetering on the edge of sanity. “You’re telling me you’ve fallen for a woman you’ve known less than a month?”

Bones’s lips twitched. Somehow, despite avoiding this feeling for nearly two hundred and fifty years, he was now head-over-heels for a prissy, murdering half-breed who hated the sight of him and snored. If this wasn’t repayment for his many sins, he didn’t know what was.

She’d just run late and hadn’t bothered to ring him. Slightly inconsiderate, but nothing that merited his over-imaginative response. How did people not go mad when they were in love? These emotional highs and lows would end him faster than a silver stake.

Light exploded through him. He’d never known joy could detonate like a bomb, but it did, and it filled his whole soul. “Again,” he said, a grin breaking over him. She smiled back even as her tears fell faster. “I love you, Bones.”

“How goes the solitude?” Charles replied, sounding annoyingly amused by the question.
“I’m a mess,” Bones said honestly. “Don’t know if I can take it another twenty-four hours of this. I’ll go barmy.” “Eh, buck up, mate. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
“Oh?” Bones said acidly. “At three am, I snuck over to Cat’s house just to breathe in her scent from her open window, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that.” Charles laughed. “Very well, then, you do have it bad.”

Bones had wanted Cat to love him with all the passion, stubbornness, and fierce bravery that made her who she was. Now she did, and that’s why she’d left. She would do anything for those she loved, damn the danger or the consequences. She’d drive a car through a house filled with vampires while fully expecting to die…or she’d leave with a band of unknown government agents even if it meant ripping her heart out in the process.

I’m home.
Most people thought home was a place. Bones had lived long enough to know better. It was being with the people you belonged to, and Bones hadn’t belonged to anyone in centuries. Now, he belonged to her, and he’d nearly lost her tonight.

She smiled. “Catherine Kathleen Crawfield, but you can call me Cat.”
“I think I’ll stay with Kitten,” he said with an answering smile. “It’s what you reminded me of when we met. An angry, defiant, brave little kitten, and every once in a while, you’re cuddly like one, too.”

Pain filled her gaze and knifed her tone. “You’re leaving? Are you…are you breaking up with me?”
Bones wanted to snatch her up and tell her he loved her and would never leave her. But he’d done that several times, and it hadn’t so much as dented the shell around her. Only she could penetrate that shell, let alone tear it down.