Necromancers Don’t Raise (Singsong City #5)

Chapter 16

Chapter

Sixteen

W e ran through halls that time with blinking lights and blaring alarms. “What’s really going on?” I gasped as I tried to keep up with her. The girl was fast.

“Like he said, your necromancer has come for you.”

Another shock went through the stone building, and I fell into a wall. Gabby jerked my arm, pulling me upright, and then we kept going. Each shake was harder, like a giant was trying to get salt out of a shaker.

Finally, we broke out the main door, and there were the cars, engines running, back door open, waiting for us to scramble in. “Go! Go!” Gabby yelled, rapping on the partition between us and the driver.

The cars took off, all three of them, but the ground heaved, and my stomach lurched while I grabbed onto the armrest. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

She gave me a look. “You know, I think you maybe should have brought your butler after all. I don’t think your necromancer likes you running around without having eyes on you.”

“There’s no way that this is Mercury.”

“It has his magical signature all over it.” She licked a finger and then held it up, like she was checking which direction the wind was blowing. “Oh, yes, and he is angry. My husband is going to be so upset that I decided to mess with the necromancer.”

“You’re messing with Mercury? How?”

She grinned and pointed at me. “I stole his girlfriend. Obviously, he’d be upset, but I didn’t think he’d rip apart the world about it.”

“I’m not his girlfriend, just his pathetic formerly undead.”

“Okay, sure, whatever. This is just how my dad got when my mom was almost killed by demons.”

“We aren’t married.”

“Then maybe you should tell him that he’s overreacting, since the two of you are so uninvolved.” She rolled her eyes like I was in denial. I wasn’t in denial. He’d kissed me to steal my broken arm, not because he liked kissing me. I was his to protect. Then again, I’d put myself in a dangerous situation. Maybe he felt like he had to protect me from Mr. Good, even if he was in jail.

Our car headed out of the last gate and onto the bridge with a bump. The stretch of metal screeched and keened above us against an inky blue sky.

She whistled as the car pulled out over the water, where gray waves the color of wet cement churned. “That’s a pretty sky. I wonder how he gets that coloration. Mom would know. Maybe. She’s not as into the visual effects as Mercury. He’s an artist.”

I peered up at the pattern of roiling clouds pierced by flashes of lightning. Terrifying. “It’s very nice.” She was insane.

The car rolled along on the swaying bridge, when it twisted and I hit the opposite side of the car while Gabby hit the ceiling and then came down with an oof.

“What was that?” I asked, trying to stay calm when it looked like the bridge was going to toss our car off it into the water.

“It’s a Jonah case,” Gabby said, reached past me, opened the door and then climbed out, pulling me along with her. The road was starting to crack as she dragged me towards the side.

“Jonah who?”

“And the whale. We have to throw you off the bridge, or all the cars will be destroyed. Every time I destroy a car, Apples gets so sad.”

I stared at her. “You’re crazy. You want me to jump off the bridge?”

She nodded soberly. “Or we’ll all die. All these bodyguards. You have to protect them. You’re like that, right? Motivated by protecting other people? You have that aura. So, jump.”

I stared at her. “You want me to sacrifice myself to save the rest of you?”

“Well, you’re immortal, and the odds that Mercury won’t pick you up are incredibly slim, so it’s not like a big deal.”

I looked over the railing at the waves. They looked like solid chunks of lead. “Yeah, it’s not a big deal.” Looking at this situation logically, if the cars didn’t make it, then we would all die. Did I want to drown inside a car or outside of one? If I died, I’d come back, and that was incredibly miserable, but not the end of the world. This felt like the end of the world. I undid the armored vest, handed it to her, then took a deep breath and climbed over the side. I dove off before I could rethink things. It had to be a very clean dive, or I’d hit that water like it was solid.

It wasn’t solid, but it was cold. I dove well, but my combat boots weren’t the best for buoyancy. However, the worst were the fingers that almost immediately clutched at me, dragging me down however hard I kicked and struggled.

I bit a hand, and it slid off my arm, but there were more bodies, pulling me, slick and gray, death and misery. So this really was the work of a necromancer. I struggled, panicking as my lungs ached from holding my breath. Maybe I was panicking from all the bodies rubbing against me, relentless and determined to take me wherever they wanted me to go.

Why would Mercury want to kill me? Did he assume that I was now corrupt because I’d chatted with Mr. Good? That didn’t make sense. Not that any of this was anything close to rational. What would Mr. Good get out of convincing me that he was my birth father? Did he want me to mistrust my mother?

I struggled on and on until my lungs couldn’t hold their air. Right before I was about to inhale lungfuls of water, I was shoved above the surface. Those icy dead fingers pressed me against a boat, glorious solid wood. I scrambled up, gasping, clinging to the deck, escaping the horrible grasp of death.

I was like that for a long time, gasping and shuddering until I pushed onto my hands and knees and looked up to find Oswald Mercury lounging on the large boat, sunglasses over his eyes, wearing nothing but black swim trunks.

His chest was absolutely phenomenal, even better than the poster, and it was right there in front of me, black runes inked into his pale skin over those hard muscles.

I gasped, then choked and coughed for a few minutes. Now I choke, after I’m out of the water, just because some necromancer happens to have an impressive chest? I was such an idiot. Finally, I croaked out, “You’d tan better if you didn’t turn the sky black.”

“It’s technically blue.”

“Excuse me for being imprecise.” I clambered to my feet and glared at him. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Me? I don’t try to kill. If I wanted you dead, that’s what you’d be.” His voice was so hard and cold, like the water, like all of me, inside and out.

I shuddered. I was cold, freezing, and the soaked funeral dress and combat boots were not helping to block the icy breeze coming off the water. “I don’t understand. Usually I understand people, but this is madness. Are you insane? Truly?” I studied him, but with his glasses on, I couldn’t read anything other than a tautness around his mouth. I shook my head and went for the hatch that led down to the hull to get out of the wind and try to find something dry to wear. I was almost past him when he sat up, snagged my waist and tugged me so I sprawled over him.

I lay on his bare skin, heat seeping into me as I stared up at him past his jaw and those angular cheekbones to eyes hidden behind those dark glasses, but I saw the flickers of lightning. He was so deliciously warm and I was so miserably cold.

“What are you doing?” I stammered, completely bewildered. “I’m cold and wet. I need to change my clothes.” And he needed to put some clothes on before his bare skin really went to my head. Or I licked him.

His voice was a low growl, his hands gripping me like he wouldn’t ever let me go. “You need to tell me what happened with Mr. Good.”

I stared at him, at how hard his mouth was, but I knew how soft and sweet it could be. I licked my lips as a rush of aching went through me. He was a dark sorcerer who was furious enough with whatever I’d said to Mr. Good to attack the prison with dark magical forces, but he had such gentle hands and so much compassion for the dead. Not that I was dead anymore, but if Mr. Good was right, I’d probably die again sometime, and then maybe I’d stay dead for a little longer afterwards. He made even death sweet.

Mercury raised a dark brow. “Do you refuse to divulge your secrets?”

He was so warm, like a cozy fire on a miserable day. He was always like that, making the worst experiences into the best ones. He didn’t want to know my secrets, not that I was Cassandra Clarence, not that my mother may have had a sordid affair with the worst man in the universe to save her business, or the other one about how he made me feel alive, safe, and whole, even when everything else was falling apart.

I took a shaky breath. “He said that he isn’t the one trying to kill me. He said…” I swallowed hard. “He can’t lie about something like that. I’ll just take a paternity test. He’s not my father. There’s no way that I have immortality from a deal he made with a devil. That makes absolutely no sense.”

He sat up, bringing me up with him, but not letting me away from that massive, beautiful stretch of well-muscled flesh. “Mr. Good thinks he’s your father? But he had a statue commissioned of Cassandra Clarence.” He frowned at me so intently that I shivered.

I licked my lips. He probably needed to know all the salient facts. Not that it would make a difference. I was just some stupidly sweet girl he’d been tricked into brokering a statue of. “That’s the thing,” I said, lamely. “I’m not Callie. I mean, I wasn’t ever Callie. I just didn’t want to tell you, because I’m not her anymore, and I can’t be again, so why dwell on it?”

“You were Cassandra Clarence?” he murmured, still studying me, like he was trying to find the Cassandra Clarence perfection in my features. I hated that look, trying to match who I’d been to who I was now. It just didn’t fit.

I chewed on my bottom lip, then shrugged helplessly. “Yes. It’s surgery. Glamours are too delicate to hold up against the gaze of powerful magic-users, so we had to make it permanent. Not that it was.”

His lips thinned, and his voice lowered. “Surgery? They cut your face into that other shape? Your mother forced you to? How old were you your first time?”

He made it sound so bizarre and twisted. I sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal. Everyone in my circle does it. I was twelve when my mother took me for my first nose alteration.” I spoke quickly, trying to not feel the words too deeply. It was in the past, another life.

“Alteration, like you’re a piece of clothing, to be cut and sewn into shape? How abominable.”

I stiffened up. “Yes, well, coming from a necromantic sorcerer, who sews dead people together, refusing to let their souls rest, I suppose you’d know exactly how abominable it is.”

He blinked at me, slightly taken aback. “Your mother taught you to hate yourself as you truly are, to make it impossible for you to see the beauty. How is that just? How is that right?”

“She taught me to be respectable. She’s creating a society where humanity is protected from all the predators that want to rip it apart.”

“You’re defending her.” He shook his head slowly, apparently disgusted with me. “You’re loyal, even though she tortured her, like you’re unquestioningly loyal to me, because I showed you some small care.”

Yes, because I was so stupidly sweet and couldn’t see evil when it was right in front of me. How dare he judge me? I pulled away, straddling his lap. “You showered me when I was covered in sewage! With these hands,” I snarled, grabbing his strong hands in mine while I raged at him. “With your own perfectly manicured hands, you cared for a dead girl like I was precious. No one has ever shown me such tenderness, however perfect I was. My mother’s character isn’t flawless, but she’s my mother, and she taught me to protect myself, to do good, and to be the best that I could be. I forbid you from speaking about her in any way other than respectfully! She’d never betray my father with a monster like Mr. Good, no matter what he says!”

He frowned down at me, at his hands in my impassioned grip, then back up to my eyes that were doubtless particularly bright from the layer of tears that hadn’t yet fallen. He pulled me into a hug, holding me so tight that for a second I thought that he was trying to strangle me, but it would be the world’s least efficient strangulation, and one thing Mercury was, was efficient.

Finally, he let me go and shifted so that he could kiss my hair and brush away the tears I hadn’t noticed falling. “Your hair is so soft.”

I sighed heavily, closed my eyes, and pressed my head into his neck. “And wet. I give you permission to eat it if you like, but it will probably give you all kinds of indigestion. I’m so tired, Monsieur Mercury. I’m so tired of today.”

“Today was exhausting,” he rumbled in agreement. “I turn my back on you for a moment to heal a broken arm and a few scratches, and the next thing I know, you’re off to interrogate the world’s worst monster. Do you know why he told you such a ridiculous thing as that he’s your father?”

I took a shaky breath. Hearing him say that it was ridiculous was very nice. Good was fabricating things for some reason I was too sane to understand. “I don’t understand what he’d get out of it. He said he was giving me his empire.”

“He’s going to publicly claim you as his daughter?” His voice was even, but he squeezed me a little too tight before he loosened his hold again. “Do you have any idea how many people will try to kill Mr. Good’s heir?”

I rubbed my cheek against his neck and breathed in his scent. “I imagine the whole world wants him dead, but I’m not worried about it. First of all, the whole thing is ridiculous. The second thing is that while it’s not your favorite thing to bring me back from the dead, you still would, wouldn’t you?”

He rumbled in his chest. “Let’s save that as a last resort, but yes, I’d bring you back. You shouldn’t want me to, not such an upright, noble citizen as yourself.”

I sniffed. “That’s right. I’m the stupidly good, bland beauty that wouldn’t ever tempt you. But I’m your pathetic dead, so you have to keep me, anyway. What a madman. Mr. Good. If I had his empire, I’d turn it into an organization for rehoming strays or something equally civil. I’m not going to kill people and run drugs and weapons, or whatever his thing is. He’s not an idiot, is he?”

“You have his immortality. That will help, but you’ll need a bodyguard with you at all times,” he murmured, running his hand over my wet head.

“What?” I tried to get up, to look at him, but he didn’t release me.

“Retta will be an asset.”

“What are you talking about? I thought we agreed that Mr. Good couldn’t possibly be my father.” I struggled and struggled until he finally released me enough that I could sit up and look down at him.

He smiled politely, but his eyes were visibly flickering behind those dark glasses. “Of course. We can agree to anything you like, as long as we are also taking precautions against all threats to your safety.”

“But there’s no threat, because he’s not…”

Mercury raised a hand to show me a small vial of what looked like blood. “I happen to have in my possession a sample of Mr. Good’s blood. I’m not going to tell you that he’s your father, because it doesn’t matter whose blood you have. You are my Nova, and nothing and no one is going to change that.”

He pulled me closer against him, so his hard muscles sank into me along with his heat.

Wait. He couldn’t insinuate that I was Mr. Good’s daughter, but that it didn’t matter. Of course that mattered. I mean, at the very least, I had the immortality he’d bargained a demon for. At the most… My whole life was a lie. Not that it was my life anymore. But where did that leave me?

I shook my head against his chest. “You really think I’m Mr. Good’s daughter? I think I’m going to be sick.” I pushed against him, but he didn’t budge. “Oswald Mercury, let me go. I’ve got to change out of this miserable wet stuff before I get a pneumonia. I might be immortal and regenerate, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get the most miserable cold known to man.”

He finally released me, staring at me through those impossible-to-read sunglasses. “Colds are miserable. There should be clothing in the belly of the boat.”

I swallowed hard and tried to smile, but the foundation I’d built my whole identity on was cracking and crumbling beneath me. “Your clothes or more goblin gear?”

“Mine. You will wear my clothing and climb into my bed until you’re warm and comfortable.”

“I will?” I sniffed and then tugged on his hand. “And you’re going to stay up here sunbathing while I’m in your bed?”

“Unless you’d like to make use of my body heat.”

I stared at him and felt absolutely weird. “Seriously? You’d snuggle the daughter of someone you banned from your auction house?” Was that real? Was it possible?

“I’d snuggle you if you’d been transfigured into an octopus, and I despise octopi.” His slight smile didn’t tell me enough, and his eyes were still covered by the dark glasses.

“Don’t teach Bones how to make calamari. Got it.” I left him, hurrying down the hatch, barely registering the elaborate carvings around the entrance because everything was spinning out of orbit.

The hall was lit with flickering aqua flames on dark iron sconces that reminded me of his cankered sword. To the left was a bathroom that was larger than I expected, with a large iron bathtub filled with steaming water. It was a weird shade of blue that matched the flickering sconces, but I didn’t let it bother me.

I wasn’t as cold as I’d been before Mercury’d held me in his arms, but I was quickly chilling again. I stripped with trembling hands, then climbed into the blue water until only my nose was sticking out. It was so deliciously warm and comforting. The water bubbling with little bursts that smelled like Mercury’s extremely delicate French cologne. It was delicious, so very delicious. I floated there until the memory of dead fingers had me standing up with a racing heart in a spray of water. Corpses in water were not my favorite, but an octopus would probably be worse.

I grabbed a towel to wrap around myself and then stepped back out into the hall, soft blue carpet beneath my bare toes. I was shivering again by the time I opened the elaborately carved door that opened into a bedroom as beautiful as a jewelry box. The bed was lit by two sconces on either side of the carved headboard, but what I really stared at was the turned-back dark teal coverlet that revealed silk sheets the color of my eyes.

If his boat’s bedroom looked like this, what did his actual one look like?

With a rapidly beating heart, I searched the nearest chest of drawers until I found a black silk shirt that smelled like Mercury. Not that I cared. It was dry, and that’s all I wanted. Other than Mercury’s heat, and touch, and heart.

I shook my head, trying to not be like this. I had more important things to think about than Mercury’s bare chest. But maybe I could forget about everything just for a little while. Mercury wouldn’t mind if I used him to block out the rest of the world, like he hadn’t minded me kissing him at my own funeral.

I climbed into the exquisite bed, curled up in a ball, and tried to get warm. I couldn’t think about Mr. Good, my mother, or the murderer. I was too tired for reality if it was going to be that miserable.

“Mercury?” I called out, and the next moment, he was there, stepping out of the shadows on the gently rocking boat, still wearing his swim shorts and sunglasses.

I patted the bed beside me. “My feet are cold.”

He took off his sunglasses, and his eyes were so soft and concerned. Those beautiful eyes. Why did his eyes have to be so beautiful? He leaned over and reached beneath the blanket to capture my feet in his hands.

I tugged on his arm until he slipped beneath the blankets beside me, still holding onto my feet.

“Mercury, tell me something ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? I think it’s ridiculous that you didn’t spend more time in the tub. You barely dunked.”

I shook my head soberly. “No, that’s not ridiculous. Tell me why you don’t like octopi and make it impossibly farfetched. There should be mermaids involved, as well as a jealous sea-witch or two. Oh, I know. You were kidnapped by the sea witch’s octopus familiars, because you’re like catnip to them. Also, you should put on a shirt before I accidentally capture you and handcuff you to a cliff so I can sell tickets to all the goblins and sea witches. Your chest is unearthly beautiful, you know.”

“Ah, that kind of ridiculous.” He scooped me up against him so he was spooned against my back and my feet could be tucked between his bare calves. “Nova, I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Sick?” I tried to turn, a new alarm growing in my chest, but he pinned me in place and brushed his nose along the side of my neck, sending a different shock through me.

“The thought of bringing you back to life makes me sick. Mad. Absolutely ridiculous. You see, raising an army of dead in the harbor, preparing to invade Apple City and the surrounding countryside, perhaps the entire country, since the President allowed you to enter the domain of a sick and twisted…At any rate, my reaction was and is utterly ridiculous. I would devour worlds for you. Is it because you’re one of my pathetic undead, as you declare with so much certainty? Or is it because you bring my heart to life, filling it with fire and longing I thought were past my capacity to hold? I touch you, and there is nothing else. I am not your master, but you are mine. You have my heart, my soul, my body, and you may do what you will with me.”

I stared at the flickering flame in its sconce while my heart flexed and soared in ecstasy, but then I remembered that I’d asked him to tell me something ridiculously far-fetched, and my heart twisted and crumbled to dust. “Oh. That is a pretty ridiculous story. Good job out far-fetching me with the sea witch nonsense.”

He growled and bit my ear, not hard enough to break my skin, but I yelped mostly from the shock. “You’re impossible. How do you not see me raising an army of dead as a sign of my unhealthy obsession with you?”

I gulped and slid my hand over his, where it was resting across my stomach. “Mr. Good says that I take after him, with an ability to read everyone clearly except when it comes to personal feelings.”

“He’s not capable of personal feelings.”

“He tries not to be, but apparently my mother…” I frowned as I considered Mr. Good’s words. If he was really my father, if he’d actually known my mother, then maybe she’d actually gotten her surgery to become someone else. Or he’d tucked that lie in there to confuse me. Or it was all lies. But if she’d had another identity, maybe that was the key to this whole mystery.

“Your mother…” he prompted, brushing his nose against my neck again.

I shivered and gripped his hand tightly. “I’d like to talk to her, but I don’t think she’ll ever tell me anything. At any rate, she was his weakness, like you’re mine.”

He inhaled sharply and tightened his arms around me. “I’m yours. Yes.”

I smiled into the darkness and exhaled some of the tension and misery this day had brought. “Are you serious about being unhealthily obsessed with me?”

“I still have an army of undead just waiting to invade something. You should probably run away from me.” He tightened his hold on me. “Although, it’s probably too late since you bathed in my tub. Also my shirt. It’s soaking into your skin at this very moment, making it so I’ll be able to hunt you down if I ever lose you again.”

“Oh. That does sound serious.”

“Yes, undead armies usually are.”

“So, you’re serious about me even though I’m just some dull, unconventional beauty who’s far too young and inexperienced to tempt you?”

“Hmph. Using my own words against me. I make a point to stay away from young, idealistic women with goals and aspirations that I would only muddle. I’m a terrible, horrible, evil, wicked, unconscionable sorcerer, you know. I’m not interested in corrupting anyone, but you were sweeter than I could resist from the first moment I found you. I should have known you were that paragon of virtue and beauty they called the Saint as often as they called you the Blue Diamond. I’ve never come across an undead who arose with a full-blown conscience before.”

“Bones was only half-blown?”

“Bones had no conscience at all. He was a ravaging monster who…At any rate, we all mellow in time, but you were fresh-born a delight of intelligence and sweetness.”

“Hmph.”

“Honestly, you don’t know how many people I’ve raised who try to eat my face off the second they scent me, or hear me, or whichever sense kicks in first. Instead, you were warning me to be wary of you.” He chuckled, low and rich, sending goosebumps down my spine.

I wriggled, trying to turn around, but he wouldn’t release me. “Why won’t you let me turn around?”

“Because you’re in my bed. I’m not a gentleman of any kind, and you are in my bed.”

“You said that twice.”

“I meant it even more times than that.” He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer. “Relax and soak in my warmth. Death magic generates a good deal of heat. That’s why I’ve gone to war so much in the winter with my undead armies, just because I get too hot otherwise. Cold winters also help preserve the flesh, so there’s less upkeep.”

“Win-win.” I shivered and pressed into him, soaking in his delicious heat until I was perfectly warm. He felt so good. Did I ever have to move? I could die happy like this. “Mercury, the next time you want to rescue me, would you please not try to kill me in the process? Your magic was out of control. I thought we were all going to die.”

He took an unsteady breath and held me tighter for a moment. “You were with one of the most noteworthy up-and-coming magic users in the world. That she didn’t put a shield spell on you and her entire entourage wasn’t careless, but calculated. She is capable of much more than that, but she did nothing except throw you off the bridge. I may have to kill her for that. If she takes you somewhere that dangerous, the least she can do is protect you.” His voice rumbled with anger, but his touch was incredibly gentle.

I frowned at the thought. I’d never been in actual danger? Gabby could have shielded us the entire time? Was she trying to kill me or were sorcerers always insane?

I sighed heavily. “I suppose I was never in any real danger.”

He nibbled on my ear and I shivered again, but not from the cold. His voice was low, dangerously delicious. “Really? After what you just saw, after that terrifying experience, you’re in the grasp of a dark sorcerer in his bed on a boat surrounded by the seething undead. What is that if not dangerous?”

I hesitated. It was a peculiar situation, but he’d found me in the sewers and brought me home as a corpse before he knew me at all. “I know that you’ll never hurt me.” I swallowed hard. I was sounding too romantic about him, wasn’t I? I mean, I was in his bed, and he had said that he was obsessed with me, but it just didn’t seem real. It felt like a magic spell that would fade in the morning. “You’d rip apart the world for Bones, too, if he were in a situation where you felt he was threatened.”

“And then we’d snuggle in bed,” he growled and nipped my shoulder through his shirt. “No, my precious heart. I wouldn’t snuggle Bones, however adorable he was.”

I shivered theatrically, even though I was already toasty warm. “Well, he can’t get colds, can he? You just don’t want me sneezing on you, so you have to let me have your body heat.”

He humphed. “It’s very generous of me to let you have my body heat.”

I hesitated and then rolled away from him, breaking his hold and ending up facing him with a foot between us. He looked at me like no one had ever looked at me before, maybe because of the lightning in his eyes, maybe because Mercury could look at something and be fascinated by its artistry, maybe because he seemed to see me and know who I really was.

“Mercury, you really considered raising an army of the dead because I went to prison?”

He shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off me for a moment. “No, I truly did raise an army of the dead because you were taken by a powerful sorceress somewhere I couldn’t reach.” His eyes were so intent, focused on my eyes, my face, but then moving to my throat, my mouth, his gaze so fierce, I could practically feel it running over my skin like a caress.

I cleared my throat and tried to focus on something other than the way he was looking at me. I failed. “Next time, perhaps you shouldn’t put on such a public display of your power. It’s going to ruin your reputation as a practically civilized member of society. Your business will suffer.”

He smiled lazily as he reached out and captured my hand in his, threading our fingers together. His voice was a low rumble. “I don’t give a fig about my reputation or my business. Not even half a fig. Although, to be honest, I never liked figs. Have you ever been stalked?”

I shrugged, still staring at him, the lines of his shoulders, his chest, his waist where the blankets camouflaged the rest of him. I’d been protected from anyone who gave me too many gifts, and my mother was very good at stopping anything she considered dangerous, but while Mercury was dangerous, I had no intention of ever stopping him.

“I’ve had a few admirers that my mother made a point to discourage. Have you had a lot of stalkers? Goblins, right?” I tried not to feel weird, because I didn’t want him to know that I was this close to wrapping him in police tape and declaring him off-limits to everyone who wanted to watch him sleep. I cleared my throat and smiled. “I imagine it’s because your kissing is so impeccable. You’ll have to watch out or I might start stalking you.”

He made a sound in his throat. “Impeccable? How dreadful. Kissing should be anything but ‘according to the highest standards of propriety’. Impeccabili translates as not to sin. Kissing should at least inspire some impurity.”

I stared at him while his dark eyes peered into my soul, searching for all my secrets while his lips parted slightly, soft lips that certainly inspired all sorts of things.

My mouth watered. “Should it?” My voice squeaked, and I cleared my throat, then looked away. “I don’t know very much about sin. They called me ‘the Saint,’ you know.”

“I know. Looking at me like that, with those enormous eyes rippling with emotion and trust, it’s very uncomfortable, as I want to take advantage of you very thoroughly. I suppose I’ll need to court you properly, appropriately, and I’m possibly the least appropriate dark sorcerer you’ll ever meet. I’ve been known to sell tickets while I raise the dead without my shirt, just to make enough for ice cream. Will you?”

I stared at him until I realized that it was getting awkward. “Will I help you sell tickets? No. Or, if I were an heiress, I would absolutely help you sell tickets, because I’d buy them all, but I will absolutely not assist you in making yourself even more desirable to other people. I have a streak of self-interest, you see.”

He shook his head. “Will you allow me to court you, Miss Nova? If you refuse, I will behave for at least a year before I ask you again.”

“What does behaving look like? Would there be hugs? Cuddling?”

“I suppose behaving would be whatever you wanted it to be as the word relies on your measure of such things, not mine. Well?” He frowned at me while I stared back at him.

“Courting? Do you mean dating?”

“Whichever term you prefer.”

“Oh, you’re sounding so French, all about the linguistics and so forth. Yes, I’d like to court you,” I said feeling brave and out-of-control, and like my heart was going to explode.

He shook his head. “No, I am going to court you. You will be courted.”

“Is this a linguistics thing or a sexist thing?”

“Both. Neither. That is, I asked you if I could court you, ergo, I am doing the courting.”

“Can I court you, Mercury?” I asked.

He pulled me back against him, tucking my head under his chin while he surrounded me with his strong arms. “No. I’ve made my position clear, and it is as your slave. You already possess my heart and soul. There’s no need to court it.”

I snuggled into him and sighed happily. “If you’re my slave, you couldn’t possibly stop me from courting you.”

He rumbled a low laugh. “That is a fair point. I’m not sure I could possibly stop you from doing anything. Be careful with me. I have very high destructive potential, and you are my weakness.”

“I don’t want to be your weakness,” I mumbled, lacing my fingers in his warm, strong hands.

“Then take care of yourself, Miss Nova. Take very good care.”