Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Maybe I went after Septimus because of the drugs.
Maybe it was my childish petulance that Zefiah had always warned me about: the need to be right, to rub my victory in my opponent’s face.
Or maybe, most terrifying of all, I went after him because I couldn’t not—because of the heat still burning on my skin, pooling on my breasts, my lower stomach, between my thighs, all the places that still wanted to be touched.
I found him in a hallway off of the main room, alone.
His back was turned to me, but I would recognize him anywhere by now.
I’d never seen anyone hold themselves the way he did, every muscle skillfully arranged, like a symphony in permanently perfect tune.
I was struck with a wave of admiration for just how gods-damned beautiful he was, even in silhouette.
It was the sort of grace I had thought no living being could ever really embody, and though I’d always admired it, perhaps the venther had stripped away all the inhibitions that kept it at bay.
He turned as I rounded the corner, as if he too had already known exactly where I was.
At first, his appearance shocked me, though I couldn’t quite pin why.
On the surface, everything was exactly as it always was, his amber-and-silver eyes cold, his hair neat, his white clothing perfectly clean.
But when I stepped closer, I could see all the little fissures.
The way the ring around his irises seemed a little darker, a little redder.
The way his pupils were slightly slitted.
The way his shirt was unbuttoned a little lower, and a bit wrinkled at the collar and the cuffs, like he’d been fidgeting with it.
My eyes slid down the exquisite panes of his face and dipped into the triangle of smooth, pale skin revealed at his throat, and then returned to his face just in time to see the way his own eyes were dipping into my bare skin, too.
That look, like he was in physical pain, ripped through my body with an intensity that made the bump of venther feel like watered-down fruit juice.
My skin beaded. My lower stomach clenched. My flesh burned. Zefiah wasn’t with me, and I was far too far to hear her, but her warning echoed in the back of my mind anyway: Careful with those reckless impulses, Kyrene.
But it was easy enough to ignore her when she was with me. Even easier when she wasn’t.
“I’m surprised to see you,” he said, exhaling a plume of smoke through his nostrils. “You seemed to be having such a lovely time in there.”
“Couldn’t let you run off before I had the chance to thank you for the priestess habit.” I turned slowly, allowing him to drink up every inch of my exposed skin—knowing that he was, even as he carefully tried to hide it.
He said, “I’m glad that you like it.”
“I think Kajmar will appreciate me better this way. Don’t you think?”
The corner of his mouth quirked. Again, that glitter in his eye, like a blade being drawn. “I do appreciate the effort you put into proving me wrong, Kyrene.”
And yet, the way he said my name was light, like a caress up my spine.
“That man appreciated it, too,” I said.
“He was high out of his mind. He was willing to take any woman in that room.”
“But he wanted me the most.” I cocked my head and furrowed my brow. “You saw that, surely. Because you were watching so closely.”
His nostrils flared in a way I knew was totally involuntarily, and it made my blood rush to the surface of my skin.
“Impossible not to,” he said. “You were putting on such a show.”
“A show you were enjoying.”
The accusation, the question, slipped into my voice without my permission. But he heard it. His brow quirked. His smile widened.
The inches closed between us.
“Ah,” he said. “I see now.” He came closer, each slow step both involuntary and inevitable.
“You know, my magic is very attuned to blood,” he said.
“The way it moves within flesh. Every pull of every heartbeat. Every part of the body it pools.” His gaze dragged lower, and gods, it was like my blood did respond to that stare—where it lingered at my breasts, now partially visible beneath the messy tendrils of my hair, hardened nipples peeking through, and sliding down my bare stomach, to the apex of my thighs, hidden now even if I knew he was thinking of what he had seen minutes ago.
“I enjoy that about humans,” he murmured. “Your blood betrays so many of your impulses. Fear. Anger.” An ever-so-slight hitch of his breath. “Arousal.”
His lashes lowered, breaking my gaze, but I watched his features carefully. I watched the muscles flex in his throat. Watched his nostrils twitch. And when his eyes lifted to mine again, I watched that ring of dark red around his irises, brighter now.
And in this moment, the certainty that he wanted me was so euphorically overwhelming, I felt it in my every pore.
I gave him a triumphant smirk. “I don’t think my blood is the traitorous one.”
He laughed softly, and suddenly, he was closer, my back now against the wall.
“Fine,” he said. “If we’re now being honest with each other.
I can smell how badly you want it, Kyrene.
I could smell it back in that room, even through all that sex.
You. Stronger than all of them. So go back to that man.
Give yourself some relief. Let him fuck you.
And when you come on his mouth, on his hand, on his cock, you can pretend that it’s mine. ”
That possibility flashed through my mind—marching back into that room, letting that handsome man pull back this flimsy skirt and slide right into my aching core. Maybe he would even do it from behind so I could watch a pair of silver eyes across the room.
The dizzying rush of blood had Septimus taking another involuntary half step closer, and I laughed softly.
“Would you like that, Septimus?” I murmured. “That’s how it could have gone, if you’d waited a little longer. Would you have liked to see what I look like when I come?”
Another smirk flashed across his lips, this one more vicious than the last.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But there would be no comparison between what he would have done to you and what I would.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, and through the wave of drugs and dizzying proximity, that onslaught of images struck me even harder than the last—Septimus’s body closing the distance between us, my thighs opening around him, and what he might look like finally giving in to all that hunger I saw beneath his perfect glass surface.
My inner thighs clenched. His nostrils flared.
He murmured, as if to himself, “You’re high.”
I smoothly swept the cigarillo from his fingers, and, before he could react, drew in an inhale.
Holy fucking gods.
Smoke flooded my lungs, and with it came a hazy wave. What was that? I’d smoked my fair share, and none felt like this.
My brow knotted. “Gods, Septimus. So are you, apparently.”
Septimus plucked the cigarillo from my fingertips, and I didn’t miss the way his thumb pressed to the end, as if capturing the imprint of my lips.
“Keeps me sober, actually,” he murmured. “Increasingly difficult these days. Who can say why.”
When his gaze flicked back to mine, the intensity of it struck me.
“Perhaps that’s why I left,” he said. “Because I couldn’t sit there and watch that man make you come without tasting you myself. Couldn’t watch you fuck him without closing the distance so I could feel you. There are limits to a man’s ability to withstand temptation. Even mine.”
Every word was true. I felt it in the vibration of his voice, so close to my mouth I could practically taste the frustration in his exhale.
I traced the lines of his features, all that smooth elegance disrupted by lines of tension.
The rings of red in his irises had grown, like desperate hands reaching for his pupil, just as I knew he longed to reach for me.
Septimus was hungry. He was starving, in a way that surpassed the typical bounds of physical cravings.
I was seeing a side of him that I had only glimpsed before, like when he had screamed at me after Kastivai, but I had never witnessed it like this.
Like I was looking at a mosaic up close for the first time, all the little cracks in the surface visible.
So many more than I’d realized before, and the shadow of what lurked beneath so much darker.
And here I was, tapping the glass.
Because I couldn’t stop myself. Because perhaps I was just as hungry as he was.
I prodded, deliberately, “I thought you had all of this impeccable self-control.”
He lowered his head. So that I felt it on my lips when he said, voice low and rough, “The fact that I am standing here is evidence of my self-control, Kyrene.”
He said it like a plea. Like a prayer.
I stared into his eyes for a long moment.
And then I smiled.
“I win,” I whispered.
He blinked.
“I could seduce Kajmar,” I said. “I win.”
He drew back slightly, scoffing. “Because you seduced some high out of his mind noble whose dick was already out of his pants? Hardly.”
But I shook my head. My breaths were still heavier than I wished they were, and with each one, I nearly brushed Septimus’s chest. My skin begged to close the distance.
I said, “He was never the mark.” And then I leaned closer to him, finally giving in to what I wanted, pressing the length of my barely clothed body, hot with arousal, against his, and I murmured, right against his ear, “I win.”
I pulled away against every instinct, ready to stride off down the hall.
But a firm grip caught my arm, pulling me back, pressing me to the wall. It was not elegant; it was not controlled. It was desperate, impulsive, animalistic.
Septimus loomed over me.
A second stretched to an hour. He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t move closer. But our want, wild and uncontrollable, burned between us, and gods, in this moment, I wanted to let him prove his taunting promises, let him fuck me here in this hallway, let him give me relief from the drug-induced burning in my veins and the memories that still pounded in the inside of my skull.
I would have done it. Even though I knew later, I would have regretted it—would have thought about how the last man I had taken inside me had been Marko, and how somehow, I’d followed my dead friend with the very creature who had killed him. I would have hated myself for it.
But there was a certain appeal to that. It was one of my favorite ways to hate myself—covered in someone else’s sweat, an orgasm fading from my veins. At least Septimus would be an exquisite form of self-punishment.
Just as I began to tilt my head up, and as he began to lower his mouth to mine, a crash rang out.
Septimus straightened abruptly, body moving in front of mine.
I barely turned in time to see a silver bolt flying toward us, lodging itself into his shoulder.