21. CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 21
Grayson
“Can I get you anything?” I asked Noa two hours later. She was staring through the window, watching the ghostly snow falling in the evening light.
“I’d like to see the sunset,” she said. “Someplace warm, where I can sit outside at a little café table with a red umbrella. There’d be flowers, and I’d have a glass of white wine, a view of the lake, and the light on the water. Hear music playing. The last calls of the birds before they roost for the night. Children laughing.”
A smile teased my lips. “That’s fairly specific.”
“Azul, at the height of summer.” She turned her head away, twisted the blanket covering her. I’d helped her put on a clean shirt to cover the still throbbing runes, and she’d camped out on the couch. “Will we ever have that again, Grayson?”
“I can’t guarantee the weather.”
“What about Azul?”
“Being rebuilt as we speak.”
She hiccupped with an indrawn breath. “And the rest of it? What are the guarantees?”
My throat tightened. “I’ll hire a clown to make sure the children laugh.”
“Make it a good clown, Grayson,” she said, so wistful I wanted to distract her.
“Tell me about the white wine you’re drinking.”
“The most expensive bottle in the world.” Her eyes brightened, grew secretive. “So rare, billionaires will beg me to sell it. You’ll have to fight them off for me.”
I walked from the kitchen, drying my hands on a towel that I tossed aside. I’d cooked for her. Stood at the stove dumping ingredients into a pan, enjoying the chance to do something useful, nourishing. She’d eaten most on her plate with a small smile on her lips and never once challenged the combination of canned beef hash and powdered eggs.
I asked, “Where did you get the bow and arrows?” She’d left the weapon on a table beside the door.
Her glance shifted languidly toward the bow and the glint of black arrows. “They were here when I arrived, like something Fee might have left for me.” The way the King of the Forest once left rusted traps in the long grass, and she’d thrown them at the sheriff’s feet.
“Angel put in an appearance when we attacked Ago,” I told her. “She shot him with a weapon like that. The arrows were silver tipped.”
“Maybe Fee has a poison arrow supplier he hasn’t told you about.”
I sat on the edge of the couch. She moved her hip to give me room. “Angel bothers me.”
Noa arched one eyebrow. “Should I be jealous?”
“No. Bothers me because I know nothing about her.”
“If it helps, she cautioned me about the witch.”
“Ah.” I flicked a strand of Noa’s hair, fascinated by the light catching on the silver streak. “The witch.”
“You met her?”
“Interrogated her.”
Noa chewed on her lip. Then completely shifted gears as if the witch was a taboo topic for the night. “Angel was with me that night. After the lament. I didn’t want to believe Julien was really gone, and she said it took her a year to stop seeing her brother after he died. A path grief needed to take.”
“Perhaps.”
“I was supposed to find him,” Noa said. “Julien. I was supposed to learn what he knows.”
I stroked a thumb across her forehead, down the length of her nose to the corner of her mouth. “And how do you know this marvelous truth about finding him?”
Her tongue brushed out to tease my thumb. “The witch,” she said with a wicked flick of a smile.
I pressed my thumb to her lips, let her suck me inside. “A Gemini Witch,” I growled. “We’ve talked about them before.”
“Oh, yes.” She grinned around her teeth as she bit down, gently, teasingly. “The dreaded seers. She told me things.” Her eyebrows waggled. “I’m sure she told you things.”
“Her strategy.” My body throbbed as I let Noa have her way with my hand. Wished it was something else of mine getting all that attention.
Her tongue flicked as if she was tasting me. “Are you worried?”
No, Bedisa. And I don’t want to talk about the witch.
She scooted upright, away from the blanket I’d anchored with my weight. After I’d fed her, I’d prepared a bath. She soaked for twenty minutes, then reappeared with her dark hair damp and slightly curling. I’d helped with the shirt. Now I couldn’t drag my gaze from her long, bare legs beneath the shirt hem, slightly splayed—widening as she changed her position to sit cross- legged style. I sucked in a breath when she gripped her ankles, drew them toward her, wiggling her toes in case I wasn’t looking in the right direction.
Bedisa… A warning which she ignored.
She slid her hands up to her knees, tracked the inner curve of her thighs. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I made a mistake in sending you to Anson.”
“Ah…” Her lips twitched. “How hard was that to admit?”
A muscle flexed in my jaw. “Very hard.”
“As hard as this?” She trailed a finger over the cock bulge in my jeans.
I forced my hands into stillness. To not reach out to touch her. Interrupt her game.
With a pretended irritation, I asked, “An interrogation, now?”
“It’s appropriate. What was the mistake? Because I wasn’t any safer?”
Alpha canines flashed. “Because you weren’t in my bed.”
“I’m still not in your bed.”
I groaned as she leaned back and crossed her arms. Left my view of nirvana on full display, the tiny black thong she wore. The golden skin of her legs.
“What do I have to do to get you there?” I asked. “In my bed.”
“Beg.”
I gripped her ankle and ran my hand up to her knee. “Let me remind you of how good we are together.”
A dread lord can do better than that, she admonished through our mental connection.
I am on my knees—
Her smile twitched. You are sitting on the couch.
I will fall to my knees and beg you to let me worship your body, Bedisa. Put my hands and mouth on you, bend you back, put my tongue where you want it…
And what will I be doing while you’re doing… that?
Delighted, I gave her the answer she wanted. You’ll be sitting on my face, gripping the headboard of the bed, screaming.
A lady never screams.
Good thing I’ve corrupted you.
Really, Grayson…
Bedisa…
I pushed both hands languidly along her inner thighs, smiling at the quiver scampering through her. She arched when my thumbs brushed the soaked silk of her thong. When I pressed her legs wider.
Did you forget that I can scent your desire? Every drop as you clench that hot sex? I can hear each desperate pant, the dirty words of encouragement you say to me. The words you’re hissing right now.
I laughed when she hissed through gritted teeth.
I know when you want it deeper, harder. How to touch the parts of you no male has ever touched. How you trust me. Open yourself to me with complete and honest trust… how you lust after me…
Such an arrogant male.
You can’t drag your eyes from my body. I flicked with my thumbs. That night, after the worm poison. When you were sneaking around my house in the dark and I caught you… you were drooling—
I was not.
You nearly dropped the blanket. I was waiting, hoping that you would.
I was dressed beneath the blanket, she protested, unable to keep the heat from her mental voice.
Have clothes ever stopped me, Bedisa?
Her squirm made me smile. My fingers tightened. Shudders ran the length of her open legs. Delicious, shuddering waves, wafting with her feminine scent. Beneath the tee, her nipples were hard and pressed against the fabric, rising with each panted breath.
She wanted this seduction. Wanted it to be slow and long. Wanted me to show her how hard I would beg, how intensely I would focus on pleasing her, arousing her. Until she was the one with my name trembling on her lips. The words rising in her throat, such sweet pleading…
I leaned into the tease, let my thumbs move with a lingering, sliding pressure along the silk where it fit into the crease between her leg and hip.
Those hips spasmed, despite her gritted teeth. Her fingers curled against the sagging couch cushion as if she was holding on. Holding out for more.
She always liked to see how long she could last, although it would embarrass her to point it out. In so many ways, she was inexperienced with desire. With the full depth of sensation, the clenching of an orgasm that shot through her entire body, not the tepid hint of ecstasy she’d once described with that boy in the empty motel rooms…
I leaned in and brushed my lips against her mouth. When she opened, my canines descended. Just for fun, for the exotic little shock, I scraped against her mouth, then tugged her lower lip and sucked.
Mine , I growled through our bond. The possessive surge scalded beneath my skin. My cock throbbed.
She curled her nails into my shoulders. Mine.
Her mental voice pulsed.
I shifted my weight, gripped her upper arms.
I’m going to claim you, Bedisa. More than I have before. Can you handle that tonight?
Can you handle me?
I burned at the laugh in her throat.
“We are destruction, Grayson,” she said, a declaration. “We. Are. Ecstasy. No matter how messy, how hard. How… bad.”
I palmed her face, slid my thumbs against her cheeks. “Any rules you won’t break?”
“Only one. Ladies first.”
I was already dragging my shirt over my head. “Where do you want me?”
“On the floor. And leave the jeans on.”