Chapter 8 #2
He scooped me into his arms and I resisted the sudden impulse to twist out of his grip.
This is what I wanted. What I needed. Why did my stomach slosh as he jogged us to his little home and burst in the door?
I clenched my stiff hands, urging them to rip off his clothes but they froze into claws.
I wiggled down and went to step toward him, only to shy away.
Godds curse it. Forcing into his space, I moved back again against my will.
We faced off in his tiny entryway–him unsure, me doing whatever the fuck was happening to me.
I looked around to buy time, finding a shabby but warm home full of lace.
Since nothing–from the worn side chair to the fish decorating the mantle–stood out as feminine. Maybe Tuna had a secret hobby.
I covered my hesitation by walking into his quaint kitchen, opening the few unvarnished cabinets, knocking aside his lace curtains.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Any sort of alcohol.” I clearly kept too sober at the pub but he didn’t have much.
Tuna wasn’t an ugly man. Muscled and tan from working all those shifts on the fishing boat. He still had a thick thatch of blonde hair on his head, sticking out in all directions as he took off his cap and ran his hand through it.
“Third cabinet, second shelf.”
I could do this. I remained the queen of bad decisions and reckless behavior. While I grabbed the bottle of clear liquid, he snatched the glasses. I poured generous doses for both of us.
“To power.” I clinked his glass. Damn. I hadn’t meant to say that. Poor Tuna would get the story of a lifetime out of this.
He didn’t seem to notice my slip as he knocked back his drink.
I did the same but a perfectly polite tap at the door caught the liquor halfway down my throat and brought it back up.
Just my luck, I would be working someone’s boyfriend - again.
I opened the door to find Noth on the other side and promptly slammed it in his face, locking it for good measure.
“Come out of there, Pumpkin.” He coughed as if he attempted to eject his lungs.
Tuna all but forgotten, I yelled back, “Don’t call me that.”
A meaty hand landed on my shoulder. “Are you in trouble?” my boyfriend-for-the-day asked.
Noth was nothing but trouble, but I still said, “No.”
The darkness in the room flexed and a hint of magic trickled up my spine. I shook off Tuna’s hand and looked out the peephole in his door. Noth was gone!
Like a warm bucket of water, Noth’s voice poured over my shoulder. “Would you rather I call you MINE?”
I screamed in sheer terror, clutching my throat as my whole body flinched.
How did he get into the house through a closed door?
I was going to figure out that stupid trick.
Turning to ask, I found Tuna trapped in an inky black portal in the floor, acting pretty calm all considered.
It was a mistake to take my eyes off Noth.
He crowded me up against the door, the color in his face saying he only missed a night’s sleep rather than the poisoning he received.
I tentatively touched his skin and it wasn’t even clammy.
He leaned into the brush of my fingers and I snapped my hand down.
“If we’re out of all the other nicknames, do I get to call you DEAD?” I had nothing left but snark.
He turned his head to sneeze. Thankfully, not in my face. “Your best hasn’t done me in yet. Did he hurt you?”
“Hey!” Tuna protested, but a slice of darkness quickly covered his mouth.
Noth's fist tightened and violence seeped into the air. My heart galloped, outracing a primal fear. I shouldn’t like the possessive gleam in his ruby eyes. Something pitch-black compelled me to answer truthfully. Tuna’s life hung in the balance.
“No,” I whispered.
Noth’s features shifted in an undefined way, but he instantly looked more Elven and some of the pressure eased in the room. “Were you recruiting poor hayseed to your cause then?”
Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.
“Or were you luring him with that Siren body of yours, trying to fill up your power? You’re welcome to try, but I will tell you now, it won’t work. Only I can fill you.” He murmured the last into my hair.
“That arrogance would drown ships.” Finding it attractive was about as self-destructive as I’d ever been.
Noth smiled with all his pointed teeth. The Nightmare inside him fanned black tendrils around his eyes. My breathing sped up.
“You weren’t trying to kill him, were you?” Noth asked, his voice sharp again.
The dark look that crossed his face gave me pause. The midnight around his eyes crept outward. I couldn’t fail to notice the same thing that stained my fingertips when I used my powers.
“Just lure him to sin.”
He leaned too far into my personal space for comfort, but what he said next nearly had my knees buckling. “No killing other men. You might get hurt, Maggie.”
Maggie? Was that the concern? I didn’t know what to do with that from my murder victim. I hit the outrage button instead. “So you’re fine with the sex, just don’t get all stabby on someone else? That doesn’t even make sense.”
His face remained perfectly serious but shadows flickered all over his body. “Let’s not compare. You would drive the sense from a philosopher.”
Was all that darkness worry? No one worried much about me. Always too tough on the outside and too anxious on the inside. I recognized I was difficult. People had said it often enough right to my face.
He saved me from having to answer that by shoving me out the front door.
Tuna crawling out of the black void was the last I saw of him as the door slammed behind us.
Noth wrapped me up in his arms, dragging me into the shadows of the row of houses facing the water.
With my back to his front, he held me too tight to fight him.
“Did you come all the way down here to torture me? Or just lecture me about what a slut I am.”
The stubble on his chin scraped along my cheek. I never saw an Elf that had to shave. I guess his Nightmare roughed him up.
“I want you every way you are. Did you think this would make me flinch? You’re too much fun, Pumpkin.” The gravel left in his voice from the poison made me think of bed sheets and stroking his back as he stroked into me.
I was always ‘fun’, but his emphasis sounded different, as if he wanted to say another word. For once, my heart and not my girly bits wanted to hear it. “How can you say that? I slept with my sister’s boyfriend.”
I didn’t realize it until now, but I wanted someone to punish me for what I’d done.
Nothing Evie dished out seemed to absolve my guilt and my own efforts ended in a confused mess, like tonight.
Maybe that was the other reason I needed to kill Noth, because if I didn’t survive the process, I would finally get what I deserved.
“It wasn't a great choice, Maggie.”
That’s what everyone thought, but the truth slipped out of me; easier when I wasn’t facing him.
“It wasn't a choice,” I said.
Noth turned to stone at my back. “What?” He squeezed me until all breath left my lungs. “I'll kill him.”
The sniffle into my hair somewhat undercut Noth’s declaration but I wouldn’t quibble with the sentiment.
I would have gladly killed the bastard at my sister’s homecoming celebration, but her mate dumped him in the moat instead.
I elbowed Noth in the stomach and he loosened his hold enough for me to breathe.
“He bribed one of your Elves to give him a glamor and must have felt particularly motivated after he left Evie crying. Perhaps he thought once I knew they broke up, he wouldn’t even make it close to me, glamor or not.
But he dispelled the magic right in the middle of the worst fuck of my life.
He wanted me to know. He wanted Evie to find out. ”
Noth brushed my hair back from my face and gooseflesh broke out along the back of my neck. I braced for more over the top declarations. Instead, my stomach sank at his next words.
“You need to tell her.”
“How can I tell her? Even though I stopped, gave him a black eye, it doesn’t matter. I never would have been in that situation if I hadn’t needed that hole or bucket or well, whatever it is, filled. It’s always hungry.”
“Oh Maggie. She doesn’t need you to explain. Or do crazy things to make it up to her. She just needs to hear you’re sorry. Sincerely, sorry. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for her.”
The words got stuck in my throat again. I never made them come out at the right time. Advice from the arrogant bastard who never apologized once for how he moved through the world? When you were a King, I guess you didn’t have to.
“I can’t.” I didn’t like admitting it when he was so nice and sensible about all of this.
“You can. Say it.” He growled into my hair like that did anything but clench my thighs together. So much for ‘nice’.
“The stars curse you to the seven hells.” A bit of power surged to my fingertips and I jerked back, afraid I actually would curse him. We were so explosive together, it was possible.
His smile spread across my hair. “I don’t mind doing it the hard way.” Noth gathered me closer. “When I let go, you better run for your life.”
The heated afternoon air rushed between us, and he freed me.
I didn’t think. I just ran. Wild abandon welled up inside me - better than any sex I had attempted over the past few years.
My heart lifted in my chest as my feet flew over the cobbles.
I really didn’t think, because I found myself at the end of a pier with nowhere left to run.
The glance behind me didn’t even fully turn my body around before Noth plowed into me, diving us both into the water.
Air exited my lungs without my permission but my kicking and a firm hand dragging me up allowed me to break the surface.
I choked out seawater, digging my claws into Noth’s skin as he calmly treaded water.
His linen shirt plastered to his broad chest, going nearly transparent while wet, showing me everything.
I’d be damned if I would tell him I didn’t know how to swim.
“Say you’re sorry,” he barked.
My skirts threatened to drag me down into the harbor but Noth barely kept me afloat, the waves lapping at my mouth.
“Fuck off.” I spat salty water at him.
“As you like.” His brow furrowed and an oil slick of poison suddenly surrounded us. He was powerful enough to just expel it from his body? Why did I have to wait on him hand and foot back at the inn?
He let go and plunged me back into the water and no amount of clawing at him tightened his grip again.
The poisoned water had to stay out of my mouth and the danger clenched everything between my legs.
I flailed until he pulled me up. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, clinging to him like a limpet.
“Are you sorry now?”
Yes. I was so sorry. And so grateful for some punishment. My willpower to resist his overwhelming gravitational pull crumbled before my eyes. No matter what I did, he wanted me more.
“No.”
“Bad girl.”
I whimpered. He banned an arm around my back and kissed me rough and senseless enough to get the words out.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I gasped.
“I believe you.” His kiss was devastatingly gentle this time.
I wanted to crawl inside him. I ripped back from his mouth. I was not doing this again.
He pulled the sopping hair from my face, eyes swallowed by black. “I need you so badly, Maggie. Come sin with me.”
And because I was powerless against him and a disappointment even to myself, I wanted everything.
“Yes.”
Fuck. I was doing this again.