Chapter 49
Graysen
Nelle’s black eyes slid slowly to Sage and then back to me.
Arching a brow, I tipped up my chin. “Go on, kick him.”
Nelle approached with silent footsteps, coming to a halt in front of her wraith-wolf. Tufts of ghostly fur abruptly hackled into a spiky ridgeline down his spine. He fixed a wary gaze on his mistress.
I mentally dug deep and twined my will around the moonlit strands, knotting us tight.
Power slid down the lines like a seductive stroke, shivering through my senses.
Her trust hummed against me, and my heartbeat thundered in answer.
My mind darkened, narrowing to a single, brutal truth.
The tamer’s will was mine to wield. Mine alone.
My godsdamned birthright. Dominance surged up, lethal and awe-inspiring, crashing through my bloodstream like a breaker slamming into rock.
Use it, use it, use it—whispered that ancient, feral part of me.
The realization hit like a punch.
I cracked my neck, and the sharp sound abruptly severed the toxic desire to pull Nelle closer, bind her tighter, control her in every way the sway allowed.
This was so fucking wrong. Deep down, I knew there was something far more menacing coming up on her twentieth birthday, and as of yet, I hadn’t figured out a way around it.
However, this, right now…I didn’t want the sway to last longer than needed.
I had to test it quickly and set her free.
Leaning against the dark magic, I sent an order rippling down the bindings, mentally pushing back at Nelle to make her do what I wanted.
Kick. Your. Dog.
The calf muscles in Nelle’s leg tightened as she drew her foot back.
Sage shifted restlessly and gave a soft whimper.
I shifted off the table, bracing myself, ready to intercede.
Except—
Utter outrage detonated through the strands of dark magic, its ferocity quaking along my bones.
Nelle centered her weight and struck.
The force of her slap whipped my head sideways.
It was a barrage of slaps. Of incensed snarls.
But the searing pain tearing at my flesh couldn’t stop my grin.
When Nelle briefly let up, her enraged fingers clenched into fists. She went for me again, lunging with a guttural growl.
I reacted faster, darting back, and clapped my hands right in front of her face.
The thunderous smack cracked through the room.
Nelle abruptly snapped out of the sway.
She jerked back instinctively, tripping over her feet and throwing out her arms to steady herself. Her eyes flared wide, and I watched the black seep away from her irises like ink thinned by a spill of water. The flecks of gold turned to speckled soot, and the ashy-gray reemerged.
An awful feeling swirled in the pit of my gut when she looked back at me, lost and confused, with shame coloring her cheeks.
She glanced furtively toward the wyrm burrow. Her blush deepened with mortification, and she jittered from foot to foot, burying her hands in her long locks, anxiously tugging at the length in distress.
Fuck, I didn’t know what to say, how to comfort her.
Sage leaped to his feet and pranced about her figure, his tail wagging happily, as he erupted in a series of relieved barks.
“Sage,” Nelle gasped. She dropped to a crouch and slid her fingers through the scruff of his neck. “Oh, puppy, I’d never hurt you.” Sage rubbed the side of his head against her cheek, and with a contented whine, licked her neck.
Nelle rose, and by the time she stood as tall as her diminutive height allowed her to, she’d recollected herself.
She was tiny, but right now I felt like she loomed above me like a pissed-the-fuck-off giant.
Her spine turned to steel, and there was my girl of fire and brimstone when she stabbed a finger at my face.
“Of course, you’d have fucking worked it out! ”
Astonishment shoved the air from my lungs.
Wait, what?
I cocked my head, realizing that she’d been under the sway before. “When?”
“When I caught you jacking off in the shower, you big…you big…” she fumbled in her tirade. “You big, endlessly horny jerkass!” She jutted her chin petulantly toward my hard-on straining at my boxer briefs as if this proved her point.
I flung my arms wide, immediately defensive. “I’m a fucking guy. This is what we wake up to almost every morning!”
Nelle pulled a disgusted face while pumping a hollowed fist back and forth fast in a beating-off motion. “Go on, you may as well jerk off all you want, the bathroom’s free.”
Nelle released her fist to furiously scratch a shoulder.
I gulped, and guilt twisted up my insides when my gaze zoomed in on the raw flesh. She was so worked up that she hadn’t noticed the ugly patches of pink rash erupting all over her body.
Fuck, I’d better get this shit under control, and fast.
I side-stepped around Nelle and quickly strode to the bathroom, pushing the door open to enter the dark, inviting space.
“Are you godsdamned serious?!” Nelle shrieked.
I cringed at the ear-piercing shriek, my shoulders inching near my ears. Her high-pitched voice had the ragged edge of fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.
I spun around to face utter indignation tightening her delicate features as she stomped into the bathroom. For a moment I was completely clueless to what she was so affronted about.
And then it clicked.
“For fuck’s sake, not everything is about me beating off to you!” I gestured between us, at our tousled hair and the perspiration coating our bodies. “Both of us are sweaty and sticky from sex.”
That had her mouth snapping shut. “Oh,” she said weakly. But it only slightly dampened her sour mood.
The bathroom was much cooler than the bedroom drenched in blistering sunshine, and my overly-heated body sighed with relief.
I leaned down to twist the water faucets on full force.
A spray of water unleashed from all the jets set around the sunken bath, and the sound of wild, cascading water broke the quiet.
Water splashed off my fingers as I held a hand beneath the steady stream, testing the heat and adjusting the faucets so it wouldn’t be too hot.
Nelle was still put out. She paced back and forth, and the untamed spirals of sweat-coiled hair bounced with her infuriated movement. She dug her fingernails into the back of her neck, itching away, too busy huffing and shooting dark scowls at me to realize the poison oak had struck.
Picking up my speed, I found the special soap, treatments, and lotions Penn had supplied to help ease the irritation.
Ripping into a box, I tossed the oatmeal bomb into the bath, watching it flake apart and turn the churning water a milky color.
“How did you fall into the sway the first time around?” I asked, curious how it had happened.
Nelle tapped a vexed rhythm against the floor with a dainty foot while raking a disparaging look down my figure before doing one of those aggressive hair flips.
“All that sex-scent you put out drove me under, as well as all that godsdamned growling you did while…” she made that beating-off motion again, “…you know…doing that.”
Growling?
My mind arrowed back to the elaborate fantasy I’d spun of Nelle a few nights back when she’d caught me in the shower jerking off, moaning her name as I’d climaxed.
The air left my lungs in a startled exhale.
She hadn’t barged into the bathroom to harass me while brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed. The sway had brought her there. And now we both knew for certain that she’d never do anything under the sway if she didn’t want to.
Nelle’s mouth pinched into an infuriated pucker like she’d sucked on a lemon. She glared back at me, daring me to speak the truth, and if I did, and she had the power, the clear blue sky would erupt into a violent storm and she’d smite me down with a wicked strike of lightning.
She ground out slowly and clearly, “So from now on, could you not—”
“Fuck my fist?”
Her nose scrunched, and she stared at me as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was dealing with. “Gods, you can’t help that filthy mouth of yours, can you?”
“Nope,” I grinned.
“Growl is what I was going to say!” she bellowed back while scratching away at her elbow.
I raised my palms in surrender and tried for a softer, calmer voice to douse her fury.
“Listen, it wasn’t intentional that you fell into the sway.
I’ve only just figured out what was going on with you.
And now, I guess, how.” It made a weird kind of sense with what we were as wyrm and tamer.
It had always been animalistic between us.
Often war. And it wasn’t only me doing it to her, she did it to me too, releasing those desirous pheromones and setting me alight with lust, the deepest recesses of my soul craving her taste and touch.
Dragging my gaze slowly over her delectable naked figure, I had to stifle a flinch when more lesions and blisters flared up to mar her flesh.
I fled the bathroom on my next mission, and Nelle stormed behind me, hissing and spitting like a nagging wife. “Don’t you ever use the sway on me ever again!” she roared, her rage exploding against the walls. “Asking me to kick Sage? Gods, you’re a fucking asshole!”
Scooping up my phone from the bedside table, I rounded on her, offended she’d think I’d let her do such a thing.
“I wouldn’t have let you kick Sage. And you didn’t kick him either!
You still have free will under the sway.
You proved it to both of us by slapping the shit out of me!
” I pointed the phone at my face, which didn’t have a lick of evidence left on it because of my mother’s unnatural healing.
Nevertheless, I’d taken her beating, and it had hurt briefly at the time.
Sage flopped down on the ground beside the bed and rested his head on his paws, expelling a weary huff at our rage-a-thon, as if to say, here we go again. I squatted down to ruffle his ears, and he perked up a little.