“It worked,” I exclaim happily. Before I know it, I’ve flung my arms around Xerxes’ neck, my body slamming against his iron chest. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t move at all, and I realize what I’ve done. I spring back from him like it burns. The way he looks at me, it heats up the blood in my veins. His face, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
CHAPTER IV
Xerxes
Cerys moves swiftly away from me, putting distance between us. My heart twists inside my chest, because I hate it that she’s afraid of me, but I remind myself it’s better this way. Still, it doesn’t help that she’s a full blown femme fatale in her latex catsuit, her blue-black hair cascading down below her waist, her golden eyes gleaming under the shade of her long, curved eyelashes. There’s power in her innocence, and her essence calls to me in a way that I might not be able to resist.
Fuck, I’ve gotten too close. I rise to my feet, but that only leaves her there, on her knees in black latex, staring up at me. A vision of her undoing my ripped jeans and putting my cock into her mouth fills my head, which tears a growl from deep within my chest. I want to say something, but I don’t get the chance. Cerys jumps up to her feet, picking up Nazarean.
“Nazarean and I need to get cleaned up now. We won’t be long.”
She slips into the bathroom, but the preparations take much longer than she expected, and they involve more back and forth. She has to warm the water over the hearth, and go back to fill the small tub. I carry the buckets for her without asking, because I know she’d refuse if I did, and then I wait at the table by the stained glass window, studying the tome of the Grand Mage under the lamplight.
When Cerys returns I raise my head from the tome, and my heart stops. She’s only wearing the duvet from the bed around her shoulders, her hair wet. Nazarean jumps down from her shoulder and comes over to me, purring and leaping to my lap and then onto the table. She cloth-dried him, so he’s not dripping, but his fur is still wet.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to wash the suit, too.”
“I understand.” I try hard to focus on the tome, and tune out her presence, but it’s impossible. Her scent of wild lilies envelops me, mixing with that of the lavender soap she’s used to bathe. For a moment I wish I could touch her skin at least as lightly as the scent of lavender. My entire body tightens, my hands on the tome. But then she draws a chair, and my cock reacts in my pants.
Fuck, this woman is messing with my head.
“Did you get anything on the Firestone,” she inquires with genuine interest, focused on the open book.
“Most of it is just documentation of whom the former Grand Mage has met, when and why, merely minutes of his meetings. There’s no specific reference to Apophis’ Wraiths, but here.” I turn a few pages back. “He received reports of spies from the cosmos of chaos lurking in the Cemetery of Doom. They were spotted with a stone that seemed to be made of solid fire.”
I need only mention it for Cerys to understand.
“The Cemetery of Doom?” she breathes. “High realms! That’s one of the most dangerous places in the Flipside.”
“Yes, and it makes sense that the Wraiths hid it there of all places they could have chosen.”
“Does it?”
“The Cemetery of Doom is a portal between worlds, just like the Bermuda Triangle, or the Mariana Trench, only that this one...” I stroke Nazarean, grateful that Cerys familiar gives me a chance to look away from her without making it awkward. “It also links our system of worlds into the cosmos of chaos that Apophis rules.”
“But doesn’t that mean that Apophis would have access to the Flipside through the Cemetery?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have been guarding the realms against Apophis for thousands of years. He cannot enter without me knowing. But hiding the Firestone in the Cemetery of Doom does make it somehow more available to him.”
“What do you mean somehow more available?” She curls in her chair with her knees up, the fluffy white duvet enwrapping her just from her chest down. Only her pretty collarbones and shoulders are visible, her skin white and glowing like ivory, making my mouth water.
“He could have cursed it.”
“I’m curious,” Cerys says. “Why did you go through the trouble of protecting all realms from Apophis, instead of just your own? For all you care, he could have taken the others. You’re all about chaos and destruction, too.”
“There’s a very big difference between Apophis’ kind of destruction and mine. Apophis is a cosmic worm that consumes everything in his path. His terrible jaws would open and swallow our worlds whole, so we can’t protect just one and leave the others. No one knows what happens to the worlds deep inside the bowels of Apophis, because no one has ever come back to tell the tale, but I’m willing to bet all living, breathing creatures aren’t doing any living and breathing in there.”
“But then why not try to reach an agreement with Apophis, serve him all the worlds on a golden platter in exchange for saving yours?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Cerys. And why do you keep probing?” I snap. “Why keep trying to find a good side to me? I’m a villain, and that’s that.”
“Oh, really? Then why sacrifice a good part of the power you regained through me and give it to Nazarean? Why are you looking after him the way you do? Because, if you haven’t realized it, he’s purring on your shoulder, and you’re stroking him.”
It’s true. Trying to be as much of a dick as possible to Cerys, I didn’t pay much attention to the details of what was going on around me.
“Please,” she says in a voice so soft that it melts the lava in my veins. “Tell me the truth. I’m here, with you, trusting you, willing to help you, ready to walk down this road with you to the very end.” She places a hand on my forearm, and my cock stiffens like an iron rod. I lean forward, elbows on my knees, my head down, doing my best to hide how my body is reacting to her. She awakens the needs of masculinity in me, my manhood raging to feed on her feminine energy.
“I can’t believe that someone who’s taking care of my familiar as they would take care of one of their own, who spared the guards at the Grand Mage’s because of a promise, can be purely evil. In fact, I don’t believe in pure evil as it is. If you chose the path of evil, you must have a reason why.”
Damn, she’s not gonna stop, is she? I can feel the connection between us strengthen by the second. My head snaps up, my eyes burning red, making her jolt back.
“Why don’t you ask me why I created armies of Undead, and how I created them? Why don’t you ask me more about the deaths in the dark alleyways of Flipside Edinburgh?”
Her mouth presses in a harsher expression, but she won’t back off. “I’ll get to that, too, no worries. But first, answer me this—why do you want to take over the worlds?”
“Because they’re being incompetently led.” The truth just blurts out of me, and now that I’ve started, it pours out like an avalanche. I can’t stop. “And when the rulers are not incompetent, they’re spoiled brats who refuse to get their hands dirty when the world needs them to.”