Chapter 18
18
EVANGELINE
T he next night I was still floating on the memory of that call, plus some seriously powerful post coital hormones as I wandered the dimly lit hallways of Darkmore, my thoughts as tangled as the shadows stretching across the stone floors.
Phone sex had been…mind blowing.
Not that I’d planned any of that. No, I’d sent one picture and the next thing I knew, my fingers were inside myself and I was surrendering to Blake’s filthy words and harsh grunts and the sound of him stroking himself.
So fucking hot, I still couldn’t believe we’d done that.
The castle was quiet, after yet another busy day of the staff preparing Darkmore for the upcoming festivities.
Riordan’s ridiculous coronation .
It was foolish to host a party, while our enemies assembled outside these walls. Dangerous, to put adversaries and allies together under one roof, unless an evening of bloody chaos was the end goal. Riordan wouldn’t tell me anything, so obviously I was on a need-to-know basis again.
Of course, now that I had an actual phone, I’d ask Blake, but he’d spent all day today rounding up more allies. In a few more hours, he’d be back at his family estate, and…well, maybe we could have a repeat of last night.
Or maybe just…talk .
I’d reached my wing when I caught a flash of movement. Malachi . His tall form slipped through an archway ahead, and before I even realized it, I’d changed direction.
His footsteps were soft, every step marked by a faint, metallic jingling.
I kept my steps as light, trailing him down a narrow passage that twisted and turned, leading deeper into the castle’s heart. As I rounded the last corner, he stopped abruptly, nearly colliding with him, stopping myself at the last second.
Malachi turned, a faint smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth, his eyes glinting with amusement. "Evangeline," he said, the syllables of my name both an invitation and a challenge. “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me?”
Heat crept into my cheeks, but I met his gaze, unflinching. “You’re always disappearing into the shadows,” I replied. “Thought I’d see where they lead.”
His smirk deepened, and he looked at me thoughtfully, “and where did you hope they’d lead?”
“I was hoping they’d lead me to whatever agenda you have hidden up your sleeve, because I know you’re plotting something. Why else would you keep hanging around?”
Chills went through me at the sheer intensity in Malachi’s gaze, as if he were trying to convey a thousand things at once. His lips thinned out, face tightening, as if he were making a decision.
Then he was moving, a possessive gleam in his eye, and I was backing up, moving away from the lust written in his gaze, away from his toned, muscular body, away from the lips curling up into a dangerous, kissable smile.
“What would you say, Vicious, if I said I was hanging around for you?”