Chapter 11 #2
Ezra faced away from me, but I felt his tension as if I stood right beside him.
His back was rigid and straight, feet evenly spread as he slightly bounced on his toes.
Something glimmered in his right hand, and it took a moment for me to recognize it as an icicle.
He was going to fight? Why wasn’t he running after me?
There was plenty of time for him to make it out of that tunnel and the djinn would have been none the wiser.
One of the djinn opened his mouth, spewing some hatred I couldn’t hear, while he shook and struggled to move his arm.
His companion fared no better. Ezra froze them!
That’s when I noticed the smaller details my brain hadn’t picked up on at first glance: the ruby-red tip of Ezra’s icicle, the matching pools of the same color around his feet and dripping down the front of the djinn. Basically, all the fucking blood.
“Not the view you thought you’d find, is it?”
A rough hand covered my mouth before I could scream. The owner had a lean chest that crowded me, crushing me between it and the tree until I thought something would break. My breath caught in my throat, part fear and part suffocation.
Not again. This couldn’t be happening to me again.
I struggled and fought but, like before, it made no difference.
The djinn was too strong. I didn’t need to see him to know what he was.
His words were threaded with enough power that I knew the moment his question ended.
In front of us, none the wiser to what was happening in the shadows, Ezra continued to torture the two djinn.
Their screams were muffled by a new layer of ice over their mouths and, well, that answered why I hadn’t heard them before.
“Ezra Alantes is the best at what he does,” my captor whispered in my ear, and I cringed away as much as his hold would allow.
It wasn’t enough. “Proficient. His expertise is freezing body parts and then promising not to shatter them for answers.” He gave a humorless laugh.
“We can see how that goes for his victims.”
Part of me was appalled, because that was Ezra using his heel to shatter the lower leg of the biggest djinn.
The easy-going, unserious, flirt I’d come to know and trust had a dark side.
Very dark. I couldn’t see his face to know for sure, but the faint threads of his voice that reached me over here hinted that he enjoyed this. At least a little.
But victims ? That was a stretch. Ezra didn’t torture innocent people, I knew that deep in my heart.
He was breaking down djinn , the enemy, the fucking bastards who attacked us first and threatened me.
This guy’s friends. I silently cheered Ezra on in my mind.
Knowing he was willing to go to such extremes to protect me went a long way in helping me control my fear. Near knocked it out actually.
Somehow, despite being disgustingly trapped in the arms of one of the creatures who terrified my mind each time I slept, or the sight of someone I just decided to trust covered in the blood of his enemies, I was in control enough to be pissed the fuck off.
How dare this dickless bully think he had the right to grab me?
I threw my head back just enough to knock his hand loose and then bit it.
He yanked it away, tearing his skin in the process and the coppery tang of blood coated my teeth.
My grin was savage, not that he could see, and it only grew as I stomped on the top of his foot and nailed him with a fist to his balls in rapid succession.
Those tipsy self-defense tricks Eryn taught me in our dorm last semester really paid off.
“You fucking… bitch,” he moaned, cupping himself rather pathetically on the ground.
“Better a bitch than whatever you are right now,” I taunted, and then darted off toward the only place I knew I’d truly be safe. Right next to Ezra.
Growing up outdoors on a farm meant it was zero work to vault over some prickly bushes, dodge a few fallen logs, and not twist an ankle on the mushy, soft underbelly of the forest. Even with only the brief light of the moon through the leaves, even in a skirt , I ran fast and free. It was glorious.
Until the hiss and rattle that all country-bred babes knew to respect froze every muscle in my body.
Rattlesnakes . I counted at least ten, in a half arc directly between me and my now-scowling, extremely pissed off babysitter.
My first good look at Ezra revealed streaks of blood all over the front of his shirt, as well as a few spots on his face.
Speckles tarnished the brightness of his hair, and even his eyes were so dark one couldn’t call them blue.
Nostrils flaring, he crossed his arms as he took in my predicament. The snakes at my feet slithered while their rattles droned. I was convinced that any second I’d be screaming and writhing in pain from multiple venomous bites, well on my way to a horrible and unglamorous death.
“This is not how a fucking pinky promise works, Rani!” Ezra flexed his fingers repeatedly, as if he imagined them wrapped around my neck. “You link little fingers, make the promise, and then follow through on the godsdammed promise. I just explained this.”
“Um, Ez—”
“And now here we are! Or rather, here you are; standing in front of me, in danger, instead of safe behind the barrier where. I. Sent. You.”
He stomped over the broken remains of the djinn, irritating the many, many snakes that already didn’t like me in the process, and I jumped back with a squeal. Why was he intentionally aggravating them?
“Is this some kind of sick punishment?” I shouted at him, my fury rising. “Do you want me to get bit?”
No response. He bared his teeth and stalked forward, eyes set on something behind me.
A new icicle formed in his hand, long and pointy.
With hardly a second to aim and without even stopping, he hefted it over his shoulder and chucked it.
His feet passed right through the mass of snakes. Like, right through them.
I blinked, a lot, but still couldn’t process what I just saw.
That was an illusion? But… it looked so real.
I swore I felt the air move when that one snake got too close.
Ezra’s glare was glacier cold as he looked over my shoulder.
I spun and watched the last djinn choke and gurgle, the icicle sticking directly through his throat.
Looking away before the vomit in the back of my mouth decided to make an appearance, I was struck with a different view that, unfortunately, didn’t settle my stomach as much as set it aflame. That indifferent, domineering glare had morphed into something molten and still very angry.
Ezra stepped closer, hands twitching.
“Listen, you should be thanking me,” I started, and he cocked his head in a way that rang a little too predatory. “Y-you wouldn’t even know about that last guy if I hadn’t… if I… Why don’t you look at least slightly grateful?”
I crossed my arms and cocked a hip, aiming for defiant to hide the way my heart rattled inside me.
I was sure he could hear it anyway. For every step he made toward me, I took one back.
Not once had he taken his eyes off me, not since the last djinn took his final breath. Then I had his undivided attention.
“I told you to run,” he scolded, eyes narrowed. That furious gaze swept over me, taking in every detail from the scratch on my cheek to the leftover djinn blood on my chin. “What am I going to do with you?”
I didn’t like how he said that. It wasn’t rhetorical.
“Making me think I was about to suffer death by rattlesnake was punishment enough, thank you.”
His laugh was low and deep, the vibrations reaching out to me and sinking beneath my skin like a dark drug. A warning sign if I’d ever felt one.
“That wasn’t even the start of your punishment, babe.”
After seeing what he was capable of, you’d think I’d have been better prepared for how he moved.
Quick and ruthless, he lunged at me, hooked his palms around my bare thighs, and threw me over his shoulder.
Not this again! I knew from experience that squirming, pinching, or hitting was futile, but I tried them all again anyway. He was an immovable wall of ice.
A very tall, very warm wall of ice that chuckled evilly at all my failed attempts.
My short skirt was now a belt, trapped between my stomach and his shoulder.
I felt the night air ghost over my ass as Ezra took the path back to the beach house.
I wasn’t embarrassed—okay, maybe a little—but I had a great ass.
Ezra was a lucky son of a bitch to be witness to such greatness.
When the path began to incline, roughly right around where I decided to turn around, Ezra’s grip on my thigh tightened.
“I’d say about here, wouldn’t you?” I didn’t answer. No way that wasn’t a trick question. “You had enough time to get about this far before deliberately breaking a pinky promise and turning around.”
“What did you do, count the seconds I was gone?” I jeered, trying once more to break free.
“Cute.” Ezra added a little skip to his step, effectively sending my heart on a boomerang trip at the unbalanced feeling it created. “But you’re going to be the one counting this time.”
“What does that me—”
His palm landed in a solid smack against my left cheek, and the sound that left my mouth was just shy of animalistic.
He did not just spank me. Between my screeching and his infuriatingly calm arguments, I thought I heard him say something about a count of five.
Over my fucking dead body. He gave my ass a pinch, and I yelped.
“Tell me why we’re doing this,” he demanded.
“Because you’re a controlling, chauvinistic, asshole— ah! ”
His hand landed on the right cheek with just enough sting to piss me off even more. I could do four more of those, no problem, and it was somehow satisfying to know I would make it through with my anger intact. Then I could kill him.