And then that silver hair is right back where it belongs on her hot-headed skull.
She bats my hand away, but when our fingers tangle just slightly, she shivers on contact. It’s a shiver that I know just coursed right down to her cunt.
My tongue slides slowly across my lips.
“You called me here, and you know it.” Her shoulders square as she folds her arms beneath her breasts and gives me a most delectable salacious sight to look down on.
My lazy posture stays in place, and I’m still several inches taller than her. I love how small she is. I always loved how small she felt beneath me. Not that we’ve had that mutual feeling in a long, long time.
Politics. They fuck everything up.
I know if I continue to lead her around by her pretty little horns, it’ll give me more time with her, even if she’s pissed at me the entire time. But it also means that someday, she’ll grow tired of this bantering. Maybe she’ll even grow tired of my touch, my tone, my torment.
And someday, I’ll never see her again.
“Your brother’s in the central tower of the castle with a guest of high importance,” I say flatly, cutting right to what I know she’s searching for.
“Oh,” she whispers but her eyes are wide and search my face.
She knows it’s the truth. I’d never lie to her. If I could, we would be perfect mates without so much hate tainting our relationship.
She steps back from me one foot after the other, but she never looks away from my smooth features. I have to keep my feelings to myself. Shoving my emotions down her throat isn’t what she wants. If I’m careful, if I’m patient and resilient, she’ll come back to me.
“Thank you, Krave,” she says politely, like a total stranger thanking someone for holding the door.
I fucking hate myself.
But I smile a gleaming, wicked smile that she watches slice up my face. My fingers tick at my side and I release a trail of glittering black smoke as I try to clear my tangled thoughts and endless emotions.
She rushes the small space she put between us, and my heart stops dead in my chest when her warm palms push against the smooth planes of my chest. On the toes of her shoes, she leans into me, and I don’t move a single fucking inch beneath her. Even as her lips graze my jaw. Her scent washes over me bringing a sexy memory of lust and a corrupted form of love. Her bare skin and silk bra brush over the bar piercing my nipple, and I wish like hell she knew what her body felt like against mine.
I wish she’d let me show her.
My palm lifts, and I almost hold her against me to soothe my pounding heartbeat. But she slips away as fast as she came.
My mouth parts as I watch her go. The door closes with a gentle click.
I’m alone again with just my thoughts.
“You’re welcome, Aries,” I whisper to no one. My heart beats against my chest as if it might race after her.
With too many thoughts jumbling my mind, I lean back against her father’s desk and wait for my handler, who will be here in just a few hours.
I may be an incubus, but my handler never captured me to be his sex slave.
He captured me to seduce his daughter in the Bin, to watch her, babysit her, and steal away all her little dark secrets for himself.
And I did.
And I fucked everything up in the process.
15
Secrets in the Dark
Aries
When I reach the dark stairway, I kick off my heels, and my feet pad soundlessly onto the cold stone steps.
A warm palm wraps around my wrist. I peer back at Zaviar, and the way he looks at me now feels different and yet the same.
There’s still that hardness in his gaze, but it’s not anger and frustration. It’s . . . concern, I think.
His lips part as if he might talk me out of all this, but I beat him to it.
“Stay here. I can shadow bend if I need to. If anything goes bad, I’ll fly right back down to you. We can’t smoke out but we’ll have to find a window.” I say it in a way that it’s not open for discussion. Telling someone rather than asking is possibly the one good thing my father ever taught me.
“Okay,” he whispers.
His hold on me reluctantly releases, and I give him a small, tense smile before disappearing into the darkness.
I feel it like a physical thing as I climb higher and higher into the tower. The shadows caress my skin. The darkness slides over me as if it’s a blanket I’m hiding under rather than walking through.
It gives me confidence as well as strength, and my pace quickens over the cold stone. I’m racing over the stairs with blurring speed, but the moment booming voices cut through the silence, my entire body halts.
“I don’t care what your father wants!” A voice like fire grumbles so loudly that it quivers the stones beneath my feet.
Inch by inch, I trail up to the archway that opens onto the highest room of the Kingdom of Roses’ castle. Open windows span around the circular space with moonlight illuminating the two figures inside. Only smooth brick surrounds them, and I don’t dare take a single step inside that room.
Because the central tower, it was made for dangerous but honest meetings.
No magic can exist within these enchanted stones. The sheath of shadows that covers my skin would be ripped away the moment I stepped foot into that room. Fae cannot trick their guests within this room. No contracts, no conniving words, nothing but honest talk can be conducted there.
And that must be why my brother is within, speaking with the Hell Lord himself.
I linger at the doorway and watch with big eyes as the wind blows my brother’s fiery red hair across his pale brooding face.
He looks tiny standing before the enormous hell creature with horns that add at least an extra foot to his already towering height.
“Your kind’s days of enslaving my spawn are over, boy,” Hell Lord growls. The clattering of his hooves against the floor echoes around the room. He glares down on my brother, his scarred chest three times the size of Nathiale’s delicate frame.
The ruler of all of hell or his four princes are not people you should ever mess with.
My brother is stupid enough to do just that though.
Nathiale doesn’t look intimidated at all. He simply nods as if the devil and he are one and the same.
“I agree. I want you to take them back. Take all of them and your curse back, and never let them step foot on fae soil again unless they are summoned. We have enough of them coming in with dark summoning magic, we don’t need yours as well,” Nathiale says with too much arrogance for a man speaking with the king of the demon land.
“I cannot break the handler bonds that have been made. I can’t break fae magic. Your people must release them,” Hell Lord says.
“If the token of your realm resided in hell, the demons would no longer be a problem for us,” says Nathiale.
“A PROBLEM!” the demon king roars. “The only problem is you. Release your bonds, and free the demons of my empire. They’re not slaves.”
Nathiale’s ridiculous face is too ignorant to show fear. Even I flinched back from the force of Hell Lord’s voice.
“Yes, but you’re asking for thousands of fae to release their demons. Some of them are dead and have gifted their demons to their heirs, making it impossible for those bonds to be broken. However, if you took back your realm token, then the demons would not have a link connecting them to this realm or to their fae handlers. They would be transported to the Torch if you restored the token to its proper place,” Nathiale explains.