36. Chapter 36
36
Nelle
D espite setting the shower to warm, the water scalded my frozen, shivering flesh.
In solitude, it didn’t take long for those dark thoughts to wind themselves around me and sink their rusty teeth into my mind. I stood beneath the shower’s falling stream and let it wash all over me, wishing it could cleanse the blackness from my soul as easily as the rain of water sluiced the grit and ash down the drain.
I am a killer. A life-ender.
A monster.
Sinking to the bottom of the shower, I wrapped my arms around my knees and burst into tears. I’d ended them. Dead or not-quite-living didn’t matter; what I’d done was still murderous. And what frightened me the most was my dark power.
So much power resided inside me.
The creature was currently curled up, sated and spent in my gut, but the enjoyment it took in rendering those things to mere motes of ash…
And if I were honest, at that moment, engulfed in the icy darkness of the catacombs, when fury consumed my blood so intensely that they’d dared to harm what I loved most, Sage, or take from me what was mine—Graysen—I’d reveled in retribution.
And that in itself scorched my soul and burned it black.
A monster… I'm a monster…
I don’t know how long I sat there with the steam billowing around me and the cascading water muffling my sobs. But I think I must have fallen into a fugue, because when I finally heard Graysen say ‘Wychthorn,’ it felt as if he’d been repeating my name for a while.
I jolted.
What is he doing here ?
“Graysen?”
His rough tone filled the bathroom. “You’ve been in there for ages.”
I glanced down at my palms and saw how wrinkled they were.
“Need a hand?” he coaxed, his voice gone velvet. “I could soap up those perky breasts of yours.”
Something other than despair wound through me—a heated annoyance. “Get out,” I hissed. Sniffing, I scrubbed my red-rimmed eyes with the heels of my hands.
“ Ah, come on. I can’t see you. See, I have my back turned…kinda.”
“ Kinda? ” I nearly shrieked. Rising, I canted myself forward to peer around the wall of white-gold marbled tiles while being careful to keep my body obscured.
Graysen was leaning against the vanity, arms crossed, blatantly not with his back turned.
He flexed his strong biceps as he shifted his weight and casually propped one bare foot against the cupboard door, his knee slightly bent. His height and breadth seemed to take up all the space, and he stole the air from the room, or maybe he stole it just from me. I reminded myself to refill my lungs and to stop staring at those glorious arms… the coils of ink…the strain of muscle…
He grinned and arched an eyebrow mischievously. “Well shit, Wychthorn, I’ve already seen you in your underthings, and they barely left anything to the imagination.”
I felt the hunger in his eyes like a caress that sent a heavy wave of heat rippling down my spine as his gaze drifted down my throat, to a shoulder, the only part of me appearing around the wall. But as soon as he said, “I’m curious how they might look… How they might feel… Go on. Show me. Just a peek. I’m guessing they’re perfectly perky tits.” I gasped, indignation exploding in its wake.
Gods, the guy has a one-track mind!
“Get out of here!”
He laughed, and the sound bounced against the walls. “Not until I hear that crack of the shampoo cap and some kind of movement.”
I grumbled under my breath, retreating to the safety of the shower head. I snatched up the shampoo and got to lathering, cursing him with every filthy word I’d gathered throughout my life. Soapy suds slid down my neck and shoulders. Rinsing off my hair, I slathered thick goops of conditioner through its length and began scrubbing the remaining grime from my limbs with body wash. The scent of strawberry bloomed in the tiled space. I stilled, cocking an ear and straining to hear anything. “You’ve not gone, have you? ”
Silence.
I frowned, pausing in washing myself. Maybe he had.
“Nope,” came from the room.
I muttered a few more choice curses and scrubbed harder at my legs.
“Gods, Wychthorn,” he groaned, deep and low. And it wasn’t the sound of exasperation, it sounded desperate and greedy. “That mouth of yours. Filthy. Utterly filthy. You put me to shame. Though…” I could hear the playfulness kick into his tone. “I could put a better use to that waspish tongue, your pretty mouth, the back of your throat.”
My jaw dropped. Droplets of water clung to my lashes as I slowly blinked.
What the hells did he suggest?
As if I’d ever do that with him!
I swung back around the tiled wall and bared my teeth, snarling.
He only grinned wider, shaking a finger at me. “ Uh-uh , little bird, you’ll learn not to bite,” and winked.
I grabbed the bottle of conditioner and hurled it at him. He easily dodged it, laughing as it clattered against the porcelain, scattering my moisturizers. I threw the shampoo, the body wash, the tub of hair masque, and the long-handled loofah.
Godsdammit, the guy moves like the wind!
And then I’d run out of things to throw at him. Fuck it.
And he had the body wash.
I huffed and stretched a hand toward him, my palm upward. “The body wash.”
“The body wash?” He chewed the word strangely, as if he’d never heard of it before.
“That one down there.” It had rolled beneath the shelves of towels. He bent, searching for the dark green bottle, and I tried hard not to look—tried and failed.
What am I doing?
But he was here in my space, and though my bathroom was large, it suddenly seemed tiny with him in it, in those sweatpants that hung low on his hips. Gods, he was blessed with a fine piece of—
Nelle! Get a grip!
“You do realize I can feel you staring at my ass,” he said, picking up the bottle and turning back with a cocky smirk.
I gaped, flushing.
His smile got more wicked as he lazily moved toward me. He leaned a shoulder on the other side of the shower wall. “That’s my favorite color on you, by the way.” He reached out to skim a fingertip along my cheekbone, the simple touch flaring my nerve endings to life. “That flush of rose-pink. Adorable.”
I snorted and batted his hand away before snatching the bottle from him and disappearing from his view.
“No— thanks —Wychthorn?” I could almost feel the disparaging shake of his head. “Your manners are atrocious.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I’d rather fuck you.”
I let out an exasperated growl, and he answered with a chuckle. Rinsing the conditioner from my hair, I furiously cleansed my skin with the strawberry body wash before shutting off the shower. “Towel… please. ”
“Better,” he murmured. A moment later, he stretched his hand around the tiles, offering a fluffy towel. “Say the word and I’ll help rub you down.”
I grabbed the towel from him. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
A second later, I heard the bathroom door open and shut. Quickly drying myself, I stepped out of the shower and twisted the towel over my wet hair before unhooking the bathrobe from where it hung on the wall. It was then, as I tied the belt about my middle, that I wondered if he knew what he’d been doing. He’d dragged me from the deep dark well of self-hatred and despair with his endless taunting. A small smile curved my lips as I entered my bedroom, only to find him reclining on my bed like an emperor, Sage asleep at the end of the mattress.
Graysen pointed a finger at me and boomed, “Robe. Off. Now!”
I glared at Graysen, my gratefulness quickly dissolving. He hadn’t been out to help me. He really had wanted to see my tits. “In your dreams, Crowther!”
His smirk only grew wider.
I stomped into my walk-in closet and found myself a set of underwear and a crisp shirtdress in white.
“Oh hells, no. I don’t think so,” he grumbled, rolling off the bed when he spied what I held in my hands. He stormed into the small room. I skipped backward, but he was too quick, grabbing the dress off of me, scowling at it as if it offended him, and was a hairbreadth from shredding it to strips.
“What is your problem?” Frowning, I snatched the dress back. What was so wrong with this dress?
He studied my face thoughtfully before replying petulantly, “I’d hoped you’d carry on the evening in the fluffy robe.”
I clutched the dress protectively in my hands. “Why?”
He took one long step forward. I yielded several back. My spine hit the chest of drawers behind me with a jarring jolt. One more step and he was flush with me, our bodies almost touching.
Holy hellsgate, it was hot in here. I flapped the neck of my bathrobe, trying to get cool. The air had seemingly risen twenty degrees. Had someone fiddled with the air-conditioning unit? No, I knew it was because he was right in my personal space and hunger swirled between us. Holy Skalki, have mercy on me, but I was finding it increasingly difficult to resist this man.
Graysen’s nostrils flared. Delight lit his eyes. His hand lowered, and a pinched thumb and middle finger ran down the edge of my bathrobe to the V, where the material overlapped at my cleavage. The backs of his fingers grazed my exposed flesh, blazing a trail of heat down my chest. “It’s the tightest thing I’ve ever seen you in, and there’s this gap right at your cleav—”
“Enough!” I held up a hand to stop him.
“But, I—”
“Stop right there. I don’t want to hear anything more from you about my tits and ass—”
“And puss—”
I shrieked and clamped my hand over his mouth before he could continue. “Don’t you dare finish that thought!”
But he murmured between my fingers, “Wet and pink and very pretty.” Wagging his thick black brows, he added, “Well, that’s how it looks in my imagination.”
I closed my eyes.
Just breathe in and out, in and out—
A sharp knocking came from the door to my quarters, startling us both.
“Who the fuck is that?” Graysen growled.
I had an awful feeling who it would be.
With three daughters, my father wisely knew not to walk in unannounced. I opened up my bedroom door and found him standing at the threshold. It was rather petty of me, but I refused to let him enter. His sharp gaze took me in—dressed in a bathrobe—then Graysen leaning against the door frame beside me, his size swallowing the space.
My father’s jaw clenched and fury burned in his blue eyes. I could see the words forming in his mind. What have I interrupted? Instead, he gritted out. “I needed to see that you returned safely.”
“I did,” I replied coldly, folding my arms across my chest and shifting my weight to one hip. I still hadn’t forgotten about last night—how he refused to end Evvie’s engagement to Corné .
“What did you do today?”
My gaze slid out of focus as the words repeated themselves in my head.
What did we do?
What did we do?
What…did…we…do?
What could I say besides hunting down an ancient creature to ask it a question, then getting attacked, Sage nearly killed, and myself almost captured?
Graysen answered, “We…” I felt his heavy gaze on me and heard the frown in his voice. “Rode the subway.”
“The subway?” my father echoed, his eyebrows rising.
“For hours and hours and hours.” That bored flat tone had returned to Graysen’s voice, and he adjusted an arm higher on the doorjamb.
“That’s all you did?”
“Pretty much,” I answered. “I’ve never been on one before.” And there was an accusation in that because my father refused to let me off the estate.
My father blatantly ignored Graysen and focused solely on me. I felt five years old again beneath that steel-edged glare. “Get dressed. You’ve missed afternoon tea with the Pellan grandparents’ arrival, and dinner too, but we’ll be gathering in the Great Room to run through the engagement celebrations tomorrow night.” I was opening my mouth to reply, no , when my father barked, “You’re expected there.”
I flinched.
And though I didn’t see Graysen tense beside me, I felt his fury rolling toward my father in blistering waves.
My father closed his eyes briefly, pinching the bridge of his nose, and dragged in a breath. His voice softened slightly. “And Danne is… Well, you haven’t seen much of him since he arrived, and he keeps asking where you are and when you’ll be back.”
Guilt trickled through me. I had seen little of Danne since he’d arrived. But right now, with everything that had happened today, I needed time alone. “I’ll…” I chewed my bottom lip while nervously fiddling with the belt tied at my waist. “I’ll see him tomorrow. I’m really tired—”
“You’ll be downstairs in half an hour,” my father snapped with a tone that brooked no argument. My stomach sank and I shrunk a little under his withering glare.
I felt a tug at the towel twisted about my head. As I jerked myself around, Graysen gently unwound the towel free, using it to massage my scalp and soak the wetness from my hair before folding it up neatly and placing it on the rolling office chair set up in front of my computer. Damp locks fell across my shoulders in thick waves. Keeping his amused gaze on mine, Graysen replied, “I think, Byron, if she doesn’t want to, she isn’t going to. So no. She won’t be gathering with the Pellans tonight.” One side of his mouth tipped up as he gathered my hair, twisting the length into a rope and slinging it over my shoulder. An intimate gesture—one I’m sure he had an ulterior motive for—to infuriate my father. I should have put a stop to it, but I liked it. Far too much. Especially the way he was smiling at me, his fingers teasing the tail end of my hair. “Don’t worry yourself, Byron. I’ll order something from the kitchen, and we’ll eat here. Get an early night.” His arm snaked out, and he spun me around, pulling me close so my back pressed into his front. My body sighed in delight at being enclosed in his sweet embrace. Godsdammit. Why the hells should he feel so good?
And then I saw my father’s reaction.
Every inch of him bristled. His furious gaze dropped to the tattooed arm claiming my waist. The anger burning from him could have set Graysen alight. Shit, I felt scorched myself. However, that was mostly from the feel of Graysen’s hard body against mine, his masculine scent washing over me. The soft words rumbling from his chest and vibrating against my back almost enticed a moan from my throat.
“How does that sound, Wychthorn? We’ll make it a date. Just you and me.”
Graysen drew us both backward and shut the door in my father’s face.
Did he? Did he…?
My eyes must have gone wide and round because when he spun me back to face him, he pulled away to look at me better and frowned. “What?”
“You…” I said, awed and a bit worried for him. I pointed my forefinger at the door and back at him. “Shut the door in my father’s face.” My father could punish him, or worse, for that slight. He held the mantle of Great House; no one disrespected him and got away with it. Hells, even I’d be in serious trouble if I’d done the same thing.
Graysen shrugged nonchalantly. “What’s he going to do? Send one of his men to take me out?” He casually strolled away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “Been there, done that. And it’s become exceedingly dull.” That was a weird thing to say, and I was about to ask what he meant when he said next, “Besides, your father has no authority over me regarding you.”
“Why is that?” He had mentioned it before. I’d witnessed it when my father couldn’t do a damn thing to stop Graysen from taking me out for the day. But it still made little sense. How it was even possible that my father would cave to his wishes all the time?
Graysen turned back to me. “The Alverac we both signed. You’re nineteen. And you’re here with me.”
“I get it,”— kind of— “the marriage contract.”
At those words, something painful passed over Graysen’s expression—there and gone again in a heartbeat—quickly replaced by something predatory as he swiped his gaze down my throat at the parting of the fluffy robe at my cleavage. A thrill shivered through me. Everything I wanted to ask about the Alverac disappeared underneath that hungry look. He looked starved for me .
Oh, shit…
He took several steps toward me. “Now, where were we?”
“I’m getting dressed.” My voice came out a little shrill as I dashed away. Over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of him before I darted into the safety of my walk-in closet. He tipped his head back, knees buckling slightly as he stared up at the ceiling and groaned in annoyance. “Don’t…”
When I returned from dressing, I found Graysen with a tumbler clutched in his hand, investigating the little world of my living room. He glanced my way, looking severely put out to see me in the dress.
The dress had an empire waistline and was several sizes too big, but my mother always got them professionally altered so the arm sleeves didn’t gape and the neckline sat right. The crisp linen skirt was bell-shaped and flared a touch below my knees. Tiny pearl buttons ran down the front.
I padded barefoot to the little sitting area by the outside windows where I liked to have breakfast in the mornings. A soft high-backed armchair positioned near a round beechwood table, where several books of the Houses’ history were haphazardly stacked on top. The brocade curtains were open, and I sat down cross-legged on the armchair, facing the window. I’d gathered some supplies to deal with my knotted hair. I sprayed a detangler over the locks, my face scrunched at the smell of jasmine and chemicals. Coaxing the comb through my hair, I winced as I snagged on knots while observing the bustle outside. Floodlights had been erected so the contractors could carry on working into the evening. The massive marquee took up a large piece of real estate on the back lawn. A team was hauling in big potted plants, tables, and chairs, boxes filled with gods’-knows-what—everything and anything my sister had wanted for the significant event tying her to Corné.
Thinking of Corné had me tugging harder at my knotty hair. I needed to find a way to stop Evvie from marrying him.
After I tamed my hair, I placed my comb on the small round table and became aware that Graysen’s movements around the room had become agitated.
My eyes slid slowly his way. I waited patiently.
He prowled about, his gaze darting about the images I’d tacked on the wall, his temper flaring as the pieces fell into place for him.
I was sure, now that he’d seen me with the Uzrek, he could see the pattern in the pictures.
His gaze flicked from the catacombs to the lake, where the Osthane lurked beneath the azure surface, to the streets of Ascendria where belladonna flowers hinted something other roamed. He stabbed a finger, with the hand holding his tumbler of whiskey, at a particular photograph. It was the thick autumnal canopy of an oak forest where the Orbweever lived in a lair made from the hair of those he’d slaughtered. “These are all places with creatures… Monsters… Others .” He half-twisted my way, furious. “What the hells is this?!”
That was the wrong question. And he knew it.
His scruffy jaw sawed. I met his flinty gaze, silently.
“What are you doing with all this? Going monster hunting? Trying to find answers?”
I didn’t reply. But he was right.
Lowering his head, he rubbed the back of his neck with a hand as he bit out, “ Fuuuck. ” His voice dropped to a quieter note when he turned to look my way but didn’t quite meet my gaze, and asked, “What the fuck are you, Wychthorn?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know.
There was no point denying it. He had felt it and seen what was left of those who had attacked us. Nothing. Not a shred of evidence to prove they’d even been there.
I’d sought the Uzrek for answers and he had given me more questions. A few of them regarded Graysen. What was the Uzrek about to say before we’d been ambushed?
He didn’t know what he was.
And what did the beast mean when he snarled at me that there was another I could claim?
“The Uzrek didn’t only talk about me,” I reminded him .
Graysen flinched— actually flinched.
My eyebrows knitted.
What does Graysen fear?
What did the Uzrek discover when he slunk into his mind?
As I rose to my feet, Graysen remained silent but pivoted to face me fully and he positively crackled with fury. His hard eyes bored into mine over the lip of his tumbler as he downed the drink in one mouthful. His lips curled back with a hiss at the hit of whiskey burning its way down his throat before he slammed the glass down on the corner of my office desk with a heavy thunk .
I held his stormy gaze, refusing to look away; refusing to back down as I walked right up to him. Without withdrawing my gaze from his, I reached out slowly with an open hand and held it over his taut shoulder.
My movements were slow and careful, as if I were approaching a wild animal. Afraid he might lunge and bite. Afraid I might scare him off too. I didn’t need to look to know his muscles twitched and his skin was prickling with goosebumps beneath my hand as I slid it downwards. I felt it. This mysterious awareness hummed between us like static electricity. I was positive that it coursed through him too. “I don’t understand it. But it’s there, between us.”
“There’s nothing between us,” he snapped, glaring down at me, both his hands braced on his hips.
“Feel that?” I asked.
“I feel nothing, just annoyance that a scrawny whiny brat almost got me fucking killed.”
I didn’t need the dark power unfurling inside me to hiss— liar —to know it.
Graysen Crowther’s a godsdamn liar!
I snatched my hand back and clenched it into a fist, shaking it at him. So be it. If he wasn’t ready to face it. I couldn’t make him.
He swiveled on his heel and stalked away. I headed in the exact opposite direction, throwing my hands into the air, and grumbled about how much of a stubborn horse’s ass he was.
He wheeled around. “Horse’s ass?!”
I spun back, glaring, and jabbed a finger at him. “Yeah, horse’s ass!”
“How did you get such a sharp and wicked tongue on you?” He stormed toward me, his furious footfall thudding against the soft carpet. This time I met him halfway. We were toe-to-toe. “I don’t hear those kinds of things from your sisters. In fact, they’re boringly polite.”
I tilted my head back to snarl up at him. “Aren’t they just? ”
We glared at one another, both of us quivering with fury, neither wanting to yield. Out of all the daughters in all the various Houses the Crowthers could have picked for the boon they’d been granted, they chose me. Out of the four Crowther brothers, he was chosen. It was some sort of sick joke the Gods were playing. Or fate had brought us together. Whatever this thing was between us. Whatever it meant.
We didn’t like one another.
I do.
Not like-like though.
The creature inside me coiled tightly, chuckling. I paid it no mind.
“Why me?” I asked. “For that stupid marriage contract. The Alverac.”
His lips thinned and he refused to answer. So I chose a different angle. “Why you then? Why did your father choose you to marry me, not your elder brother Kenton?” The eldest being the respectful choice.
“My father didn’t choose me,” he barked back.
“Your Aunt—”
“My sister did.”
“Ferne?” But she’d been, what , only ten, eleven years old at the time? My mouth fell open. “You let her make that decision?”
“ I sure as fuck didn’t. But no one else had a say in which one of us it would be. It was her right. It had always been her right.”
What the hells did that mean? Her right ?
And it was there, one of the questions I’d been hoarding since I’d met Ferne five years ago and encountered the strip of delicate lace strapped across eyes that had been stolen. “Your sister’s eyes?”
Darkness and rage flickered within the dark abyss of his gaze.
And still, he didn’t answer.
“The Horned Gods stole them. Why?”
“Why not?” he replied coldly, staring down the length of his nose at me.
So I was right. The Horned Gods desired different . We were there to do their bidding so they could live on the outskirts of the world. For millennia, our Houses had served them. It was us who found the souls that extended their lives or unearthed the strange things they could use in their spells.
But what would a pair of eyes do for them?
What could Ferne see the rest of us couldn’t?
She knew. Back then, when the Crowthers claimed me for the Alverac, I’d felt Ferne’s interest in me. Graysen somehow had sensed my dark power slinking around him too.
Ferne knew.
She knew there was something between Graysen and me. “She knew that you and I—”
He scoffed, crossing his arms across his chest. “My sister, you’ll find, has a twisted sense of humor.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. If he was admitting that there was something there, humming between us. But his gaze had skimmed over my shoulder and I knew where it had landed—the map I had of the catacombs beneath Ascendria.
Graysen rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and when his gaze sliced back to mine, his expression was thunderous. Whipping his hand out, he fisted my hair right at the back of my head.
I yelped in surprise, my hands frantically clawing at his. A burning sting flared across my scalp as he shook me just hard enough that my eyes bit with heat. “Don’t you dare pull that shit on me again!” I knew what he was bellowing about. Not my wicked tongue, but because I’d deceived him in my quest to seek the Uzrek.
He arched my head back. Forcing my spine to bow. Forcing me to stare into his harsh gaze. My fingers wrapped around his forearms to steady myself. “I needed to know,” I rasped. “You wouldn’t have taken me.”
“No. I fucking wouldn’t,” he snarled. “I’m going to slap your ass pink, then red, then paint it blue black. What the hells were you thinking going in there…to find the Uzrek? Do you know what that beast could have done to you?”
“I think the Uzrek should have been more afraid of me,” I gasped out.
His whole body jerked as if I’d physically hit him. Then he blinked and slowly nodded in agreement, but he didn’t loosen his fist.
It suddenly dawned on me that his anger wasn’t about my seeking the Uzrek at all. This was about him. The shock of realizing his truth was kindling bursting into flame, licking every nerve, burning oxygen from my lungs.
In that cavern buried below Ascendria, when I’d been captured by a net, there was only one person I’d heard in the pitch-black darkness. All of my senses had been honed on him. The slash of his daggers, deep grunts, the sharp intake of wounded breath. He’d fought furiously, fast and hard. He had to be swifter than the wind, battling his way to me.
And it was my name he roared, Nelle , again and again and again.
Graysen Crowther cared!
And this was his jerkass way of saying it because he wouldn’t or couldn’t admit it.
My fingers inched up his arms to his shoulders, traveling up his throat, before threading through his thick, unruly hair. He breathed harder and his nostrils flared as confusion entered his gaze. “It’s okay, Graysen… I know…”
“What do you think you know?” Threat laced his words, emphasized with a tighter hold on my hair.
“You care—”
“I don’t care,” he snarled. But I caught it. I saw it. The truth he was trying to avoid. He’d been afraid for me.
“You care,” I whispered back softly. And then I fisted his hair. Harder. Sharper. Surprise flared through inky eyes; the pain fierce enough to make him gasp. I bowed his head toward my own while I rose on tippy-toes. My words brushed against his lips. “It’s okay.”
“I. Don’t. Care,” he bit out savagely.
I wondered if my lies tasted sweet like honey, what his lies tasted like on his tongue.
Letting go of his hair, I cupped his cheeks, the scruff tickling my palms. I kissed one corner of his mouth, then the other. “I know… you don’t care… not enough to save Sage.” Not once, but twice.
He squeezed his eyes shut and a pained noise crawled from his throat. When his eyes opened again—acquiescence shone back at me. His fist slowly unfurled in my hair, and his fingers massaged the sting from my scalp. I arched into his touch.
“Have you heartbroken and wailing for months on end?” he replied, shaking his head.
“You didn’t care to take on an Uzrek,” I smiled, pressing my mouth to the tiny faint scar nicking his upper lip. “Or those things that tried to separate us.”
“Go back to your father without you?” And he made a tsking sound before nudging my face to the side with his nose. His warm lips pressed a kiss to my cheek while his hand untangled from my hair to glide gently down my neck and along my shoulder, teasing a hot shiver from my body. He wound his other arm around my back, drawing me into his hard physique.
I closed my eyes, feeling his featherlight kisses against my jaw. “Nor did you care to stand beside me against Master Sirro,” I breathed. All for me. He’d done it for me.
He made a growling noise, rough enough that I snapped my eyes open, finding him glaring at me with a blazing intensity that caused my heart to clench. “Sirro wants what he can’t have…and you’re mine, little bird.” He captured my mouth, tugging sharply on my lower lip with his teeth. The burn was exquisite, the soothing flick of his tongue, divine. But it was his claim that had me melting against him.
You’re mine.
But what he didn’t realize was that he was mine. He’d always been mine.
Before he could kiss me, I kissed him, and while the words leaving his mouth denied he felt anything for me, his kisses told me otherwise. One large hand clasped my throat softly , the other moved to my hip, gripping hard, and his lips were painfully gentle. A whispering glance, an apology, and a burning need— mine, mine, mine —he silently said with every brush of his mouth, every sweep of his tongue. I twined my fingers through his silky hair, breathing in his woodsy scent and the faint taste of whiskey, and it was my kisses that became more insistent. More greedy. More possessive.
He groaned gruffly as I nipped his lower lip. And as he gathered me up—
My stomach growled loudly.
He paused, his brows slashing upward.
I burst into laughter as my stomach grumbled again.
“Hungry?” he grinned.
Well, mostly for his kisses. But now I realized how ravenous I was.
Hmmm, kisses or food?
He broke away and I groaned in frustration.
“I’ll find us something in the kitchen. Stay here,” he ordered, striding for the door.
“Gods, you’re so bossy,” I grouched.
He made a pffting sound like I occasionally did, and I couldn’t help but grin.
He left and I spun around laughing, my damp hair swirling as I did a little dance, a shimmy of my shoulders, kicking up my heels. Graysen Crowther cared. He was going to come back with food and we’d have dinner together as if we were on an actual date.
And then we’d kiss. A lot. I’d make sure of it. Because those kisses had inflamed every single part of my body. Deprived of his attention, I ached all over, and I wanted more!