Chapter Twenty Five
My plan of seduction isn’t really off to the best start. I tried brushing up against him every chance I could, which given the massive size of the kitchen wasn’t as often as I’d hoped when I came up with the idea.
Jaak didn’t react when I moved close and brushed against him, or found an excuse to linger at his side when I reached for something. He also didn’t reach for me either, which felt like a mixed signal given the fact that my body is currently in the middle of being on fire for the demon.
I wet my lips and glance over at Jaak. He’s taking the food out of the oven and I practically bite my fist at the sight. A man in the kitchen? A bonafide sex bomb even when I’m not under the influence of a sex potion.
Jaak turns and gives me a smile. I let out a sigh and lean forward with my chin in my hand.
I’m sitting at the island on a stool. We’ve been here awkwardly trying to make small talk with one another while I rubbed up against him every chance I got.
Needless to say it’s been a tense hour. Every minute that’s passed feels like an eternity when all I want to do is climb on top of the big man.
The scene we had on the bench has been playing on a loop for me, and that was before the idea of Jaak being in his demon form started percolating for me.
Once that had happened the control I had stopping me from crawling across the island counter and lunging at Jaak was tenuous.
In short, I am not well.
I grab my glass of iced water, the only thing I’m okay drinking right now after the house poisoned me with lust, and take a giant gulp. I’ve been burning up over the past hour and dying of thirst, my throat feels like I swallowed a sandbox. I wonder if Jaak feels the same way.
“I’ll get some plates,” I offer when he sets the roast chicken and potatoes on the counter.
“Thank you, Meadow.”
Meadow.
I shiver when I hear him say my name. It sounds like honeyed syrup just rolling off his tongue in a way that I’ve never heard before from someone else.
I sneak a peek at Jaak when I reach for plates in the cupboard the house opened for me.
He has a knife in his hand and it looks like he was about to cut in the chicken but he stopped mid-slice.
He stopped because he’s watching me. The way he’s looking at me is…
interesting. It’s different from how he’s looked at me before, even when we were on the bench earlier.
He looks at me like I’m prey. I’ve never been hunting but I did volunteer in the library on Fridays when they played approved nature documentaries for free. After hundreds of Fridays, I recognize exactly what a predator looks like when they’ve locked onto something they’d like to eat.
Gods, does he want to eat me?
I grab a set of plates and think about that.
Would I mind Jaak eating me? I mean, if it was in the strictest sense of the word, yeah, I’d have beef with that but I don’t think that’s the hunger I saw on his face.
The house pops open a drawer to my left and I see silverware inside.
I grab the utensils we need, a knife and fork each for us, while I shake my head and scold the house.
“This doesn’t make up for what you did. I don’t care if you thought you were helping with a love connection.”
I turn back towards the island in time to see Jaak’s eyes still on me. I almost drop the plates and silverware I’m holding when I see his eyes flash silver, but before I can make sure I wasn’t imagining it, Jaak looks away from me.
“Did you find what you need?” he asks, face down and eyes on the chicken he’s carving.
I nod and then answer him because he’s still not looking at me. “Y-yes. The place really is fully stocked with everything we need.”
He looks up then, face completely calm and eyes a deep brown color. “Wonderful. Come here and I’ll serve you,” he sounds calm too, definitely not like a sex potion is eating him up from the inside. Maybe I imagined the silver?
“Thank you.” I cross over to him and put the plates down for Jaak to serve us dinner. It’s when I’m up close that I see the sweat beading down his neck. The collar of his shirt looks like it’s glued to him. Matter of fact…I tip my head to the side and look him over.
His shirt is less romantic and mysterious and more sticking to his body because of how much heat and sweat he’s putting off.
“You feeling warm?” I ask.
His hands tighten on the knife and serving fork. “It’s to be expected.”
“Right.”
I sit down across from him and Jaak puts the plate in front of me and hands me a set of silverware. “You should eat before it gets cold. You’ll need your strength soon enough.”
I take the silverware and I’m not ashamed to admit that I make sure my fingers brush against his. “Oh, for what?” I ask, giving him a sunny smile. I’m aiming for innocent but even I heard the breathy sound in my voice.
Jaak’s eyes drop to my mouth. “The battle,” he reminds me before looking back up. “We have much to do to locate the head mage.”
I bite my lip. “I’d much rather work up an appetite doing something else,” I tell him and settle onto my stool. “And I wish you wouldn’t pretend that you don’t feel it.”
“It’s not that I don’t feel it, I feel it too much, my heart.”
I sit up straight in surprise and put my silverware down. Dinner isn’t important once he says that. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the last time I experienced a potion like this the effects were not nearly as strong or fast-acting. I thought–I thought to take it slow so that you would not be at a disadvantage under its sway with it affecting your behavior.” I blush.
I know what he means. He means me wanting to wrap myself around him until I can’t breathe.
“But even then I thought I would be able to withstand much of its influence. I’m finding now that’s not the case. ”
I watch Jaak as he plates his own food and sits down beside me with a weary sigh. “I’m doing my best to stay civilized. To remain in control of this form but my hold cannot be trusted. If I tell you to leave me tonight, do it.”
“What? No. I’m not leaving you.”
“I never meant for it to go this far.”
I turn in my stool to look at him and grab his hands so that he turns to face me.
“I don’t-what do you mean this far? We’re married.
We’re tied together right at the soul. We have this,” I say, holding up my wrist and summoning the bond to yank it “I think things have gone about as far as they can go, don’t you?
Why would you want me to leave you just because the house gave us a sex potion. ”
“Because I will not be able to hold this form, Meadow. Do you understand what I mean when I say that?”
Desire, anticipation, adrenaline. All of it mixes together into a cocktail that makes me feel more on fire than whatever the house gave me. I do know what he means.
“Your Minotaur,” I say.
“Yes,” he confirms and his face twists in anguish.
The look on his face is at odds with how handsome he is yet somehow he still makes it look pretty.
He’s the model for broody and sexy, the tortured soul, or whatever it was that I was reading about in a book last week.
Jaak makes any fictional hero seem woefully inadequate.
“I don’t see the problem here,” I tell him.
His eyes cut to me and he shakes his head. “Meadow, no. That can never happen. I told you before.”
“And I told you before, I want you exactly the way you are.” I reach up and run my fingers through his hair and then along his jaw before I cup his face. “I don’t care how it is. Monster. Man. You’re mine just as much as I’m yours. I might be your anchor but you’ve been that for me for years.”
His hand comes up to cover mine. “That was different.”
“Not really. I was lost in a hellscape of memories that I couldn’t escape and you kept me sane. How is that any different than what we have going on right now?”
He smiles, the lift of his mouth makes his lips brush the corner of my hand. It’s such a gentle touch. It ignites the hunger and need in me that already existed before the potion made its debut.
I move my hand so I can brush my thumb across his bottom lip. “I want you without this glamour you put on for me. I want the real you.”
He shakes his head the way I know he’s going to so I lean forward and kiss him before he can tell me why what I’m asking for is a bad idea.
It’s a slow and sweet kiss. Not at all like what we had on the bench yet somehow the sweetness of it makes me want him that much more.
I smile at him when we break apart and then turn back to my meal.
“You can say that it’s not a smart idea all you want but it’s inevitable,” I tell him, cutting into my chicken and spearing a potato.
“You are stubborn,” Jaak says.
“Don’t I know it.” We eat in companionable silence for a few minutes and I look around the kitchen keeping an eye out for any more surprises it might have in store for us. “When you said the house might have thought it was being helpful by giving us the potion, what did you mean?”
Jaak pauses, his potato laden fork right near his lips and without missing a beat says, “We are newlyweds. The house may have interpreted our lack of consummation as something that needed to be remedied.” My mouth drops open but Jaak doesn't notice. He eats his potato and keeps on talking. “The magic here is old, it also doesn’t feel like anything the mages used to summon me. It may be from a tradition that pushed it to intervene.”
“Intervene so we’d…” my voice trails off and I grab my water glass, not to take a sip but to press it against my forehead.
“Yes,” Jaak says. “Consummate the marriage. Intimacy is vital.”