Potion #3
I looked over the back of the couch to the bed, then to him.
I verbalized this look. “I’m in yours.”
“No. You’re in ours.”
I pulled my hand from his. “Tanyn—”
“Someone text commed you to tell you that you were next up for murder.”
“Yes, I know. But—”
“No fucking buts, Catla. Are you fucking joking with this shit?”
At his words and tone, his obvious sudden anger that was so totally not him, I slammed my lips together and stared at him, watching his eyes seeping straight to pissed-right-off demon red.
“You will be at my side,” he growled.
“I wasn’t at your side all day today,” I pointed out.
“I was not vulnerable, as in, asleep, in that time. Neither were you.”
Ah.
The light was dawning.
“If you did not sleep at my side, I wouldn’t sleep,” he kept at me.
“As I’ve already mentioned, I understand this is going fast for you.
I wanted to mitigate that. But that option was wrested from me when someone shared you’re next up to die.
I know this is asking a lot. However, I have no choice but not to ask it, instead, simply make it so. ”
Good gods, he acted like I was his fated mate.
“And we’ve slept together before,” he kept going. “I didn’t think it’d be a big fucking deal.”
Now he sounded like he was just grumping.
“I didn’t say it was a big fucking deal,” I noted. “I just mentioned it. We have, in effect, known each other for only three full days. And now I’m all but moved in with you.”
“You’re hardly moved in with me.”
“Whose clothes are those then? The ones that are hanging in your closet?”
“I didn’t ask your mother to pack you like that. She did it on her own. So don’t lay that on me,” he fired back.
I had to give him that.
“Though, I can’t say I’m upset she packed that heavy, since eventually, that’s where they’re going to be anyway,” he added.
“I think we should stop talking about this,” I suggested.
“Agreed,” he bit off.
“And for the record, I don’t mind sleeping with you. I was just making a point.”
“And I thought your point was bullshit.”
I got mad again and instantly went back to wanting to talk about it.
Or fight about it.
“Where’s Mr. Sensitivity, I understand this is going too fast?” I demanded.
He stood and glowered down at me.
And then he gutted me.
“Listen, I get it. You’ve made it abundantly clear. You don’t want me.”
I opened my mouth to say…what, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“And honest to fuck, if I could let you go, because you want that so fucking bad, I would. But I can’t. You’re mine. The decision is made. You’re perfect. You’re the one. It has to be you. So it is fucking going to be you, Catla.”
“Tanyn—”
“So it’s time you get your head wrapped around that.
No, as bad as I want you, I will not fuck you until you’re ready.
No, I will not truss you up in a wedding gown and drag you into a temple and force you to marry me.
I’ll give you time to settle into the fact that I’m yours.
But you must settle into the fact that I…
am…yours. That’s it. The end. Now, I trust my orders were seen to and you received a tour of the castle. ”
“Yes, but, Tan—”
“Excellent, then you can make your own bloody way to the antechamber of the dining room.”
With that, he turned on his foot and prowled out the door.
I stared after him, nursing my anger that he flew off the handle like that. Also, that he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
Then I cringed at the reminder of his You’ve made it abundantly clear. You don’t want me, something that was not the case at all.
Yet I certainly hadn’t given him much indication of that.
Last, that day, he’d not only discovered his father was murdered, his mother was murdered, and there was the good possibility that his father had always loved his mother but was drugged into banishing her and their son and neglecting them both for decades.
And honestly, if there was any free thinking beyond the drugged state, and somewhere in his mind Riland understood for the thirty-three years until his death that his beloved family was at the mercy of the dread Tatra, and he had no power over that, it had to be daily torture for him.
Then what did I do?
Make some stupid mention about my sleeping arrangements, when I really could give two shits if I slept with Tanyn or not. Like he said, we’d done it before, but here, the bed was massive. I could toss and turn all I liked and not even kick him.
But it was thoughtless.
And thoughtless in this time for Tanyn was also cruel.
“Damn, crap, ugh,” I muttered under my breath, pushed up, smoothed down my skirt in a gesture that was more nerves and agitation rather than anything else.
And with nothing for it, I walked out the door to find the antechamber to the dining room where we would have pre-dinner drinks in the midst of a missing traitorous queen who it seemed had significant homicidally insane tendencies, I’d be meeting his close bud, and sharing drinks and dinner with him, my family and friends.
All while Tanyn was justifiably (and that was worst of all) pissed at me.
Great.
No.
Farging fabulous.
Bah!