Temperance (Damned Connections Book 3) by Lark Taylor

Author:Lark Taylor [Taylor, Lark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lark Taylor
Published: 2024-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Toby

Icouldn’t believe how close I’d come to slipping up.

I hadn’t lied to Blaise—I really hadn’t wanted him to come because I was afraid of him getting hurt. Because he was mine to protect.

But the part about it being because of the contract was a lie. At least, it was starting to feel that way.

I’d been tempted for a moment to confess my feelings. To open up about the realisation I’d had earlier at the fault lines. To tell him that these past few weeks with him had been some of the happiest in my life. That, if he was open to it, I wanted to explore something more with him.

A relationship.

What had stopped me were the memories of the previous times I’d done this exact thing. Three times, to be exact.

The first had been Carlo, in 1678. After several months in contract, I’d gone to my knees to confess my love for him. At first, I’d thought my feelings were reciprocated.

Until the next morning, when I woke up with only a sheet of parchment for company. Carlos’s scribbled note had informed me that while he was grateful for the place I’d helped him to reach, he didn’t see a future with me.

The second had been Adrian, over a hundred years later. He’d at least been honest about it. His rejection was the kindest of the three.

Which brought us to Alistair.

His was the one that had cut me the deepest. I’d truly believed we had something special until he’d thrown it back in my face.

“You deceived me,” he’d screamed, throwing articles of clothing into his suitcase. “All this time, I thought we had a contract, but you’re the same as all the others. You always want more than I’m willing to give.”

The notion that I’d deceived him had followed me like a cloud for years after. Only several sessions with Dr. Tyler had helped me let go of it. He’d explained that it was okay for my feelings to change, but that I had to respect that Alistair’s had not.

And I did respect it. I’d respected all of them, even as they walked out of my life without so much as a backwards glance. Since Alistair though, I’d not repeated my mistake.

I wasn’t about to repeat it with Blaise either. There’d be no walking out of my life for him, not with how intertwined we were.

If he didn’t want anything more…I didn’t know how I’d deal with that. And even if I didn’t tell him, I still had to figure out how I was going to cope being around him when the contract ended. But we had several long months until I needed to worry about that. There was no way in hell I was going to do anything to risk Blaise cutting those months short.

Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. It felt like a problem for future Toby to deal with.

Fuck. Tyler was going to be pissed that I was putting this off. Maybe even enough to tie me to his St.

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