Fury ripples through me at her words and I savour the energy. Only this woman can make me feel emotion. This is part of the reason I believe that I am deeply in love with her. No other human I have met has managed to make me feel a damn thing, let alone the kind of anger she can pull from me. Though I will admit that there are days when I wonder if my life would be easier if she hadn’t come into it.
Without looking at her, I reach over to capture her wrist in a tight grip. "You will not describe our physical affection for each other in such terms."
She falls silent for a few seconds and then lets out a sharp laugh which receives an answering bang from the trunk. She sends a glare over her shoulder. "That's rich coming from you. A man who can barely string three words together. I don't care how you want me to describe sex, I will do and say as I please."
"Skye." I say her name warningly. “Despite what you think, you answer to me, and if you continue down this path, there will be consequences to that bitchy attitude.”
"What consequences?" she demands. "You promised you wouldn't hurt me."
"Didn't promise I wouldn't hurt anyone else," I say darkly, taking the familiar path through the darkened streets to the Sanctuary palace. "I can do plenty of damage to you without touching you."
She gasps and yanks her wrist away from me. "So you think it's okay to hurt me mentally, even if you won’t lay a hand on me physically? You're an abusive asshole, Wolfe."
I close my eyes for a brief moment and then open them to concentrate on the road. The last thing we need to do is wreck the vehicle this close to home. "I'm done talking about this."
She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds and I think she's finally done speaking her mind, but then she pipes up just as we drive into the underground garage. "That's because you can't string more than three words together."
I let her snarky comments slide. Mostly because I think it's a good sign that she continues to fight me, no matter how ineffectual she is. She doesn't realize that she'll never win against me, because she has no idea how determined I am to keep her in my life. Nothing else matters to me. I will happily lay down my life, slaughter entire hordes and claim cities for her. The day she discovers this is the day she becomes an incredibly dangerous person.
We hand our zombie friend over to the palace guards and instruct them to take all three Primitives to Dr. Summers’s lab. A secure room was built into the lab for them. Likely, Dr. Summers is up waiting for the delivery.
Skye and I climb the palace stairs, floor after floor toward the top. When we reach the second to top floor, which houses the harem, Skye attempts to dart past me to go through the door. I grab hold of her arm before she makes it and continue up the stairs. She stumbles behind me, catches herself and then grudgingly continues to ascend.
"I'm not staying with you, Wolfe. Forcing me to live with you in the Warlord's chambers is too much. I won’t do it." She ruins the forcefulness of her words by yawning widely.
I ignore her, continuing up until we reach the Warlord’s floor. I push the stairway door open and continue down the hall until we reach the entrance. I let her go once we’re safely inside and the doors are locked behind us. Skye immediately whirls around and attempts to wrench the door back open but discovers that it’s locked from the inside as well as the outside.
"Let me out," she snaps at me.
"No."
I walk past her through the chambers and into the solarium. I intend to continue through to the private chambers, but she catches hold of my arm and attempts to swing me around. When I don't immediately comply, she whirls herself in front of me and glares.
"If you don't let me out, I will set this place on fire. Just like I did the harem."
I take a step away from her and rub the bridge of my nose. Goddamn, I'm tired. It's been a long few days. Satisfying and productive. In just 48 hours I managed to complete the mission of capturing live zombies as well as furthering my relationship with Skye. Though I'm happy that we've taken a big step in our physical relationship, I'm beginning to wonder at the wisdom of keeping her in the Warlord's chambers. Truly, I keep this place devoid of people and clutter so that I can have peace. Skye is anything but peaceful.
Yet, even angry, I love having her near. I look down at her, sinking into the glory of her angry profile. Her long, dark auburn hair flows in waves over her shoulders, touching the leather and the more feminine garments beneath. Everything about her is so achingly beautiful I wonder how she wasn't captured long before Silas got his hands on her. I reach out to touch her, taking hold of her shoulders.
"Not everything needs to be a war between us." I dig my fingers into her shoulder blades for emphasis, kneading her muscles, but also squeezing more tightly than necessary to get my point across.
She shakes her head dismally and keeps her eyes averted as she says, "I think it does."
"Why?"
She shrugs my hands away and steps back. She begins pacing the floor, away from me toward the solarium garden, then around the tables and back toward me. I'm gratified that she's not trying to physically avoid me.
"We’re way too different to be together," she says, almost to herself, still pacing. "Killing runs through your veins, it's who you are, it's what you do. I need a better life than that, a stable one. I want things. Things you can't give me."
"What things," I demand. She clearly hasn't come to know me well enough if she thinks there's anything I won't do for her.
"Things like babies," she snaps, whirling around to glare at me with her arms crossed protectively over her chest. "Just look at you, you can’t have babies!"
Now she’s starting to piss me off. "If I'm understanding the fundamentals correctly, I damn well can have babies."
She throws her hands up in annoyance. "You know what I mean. It's not that you can't – it’s that you shouldn't."
"Why shouldn't I?”
"Because you'll be a terrible father. You're impatient, you're dangerous and you hardly speak. Children need to be spoken to."
"And you see children in your future?" I ask her.
"Yes… no… I don't know. But I'd like the option… maybe."
"You're searching for reasons why we shouldn’t be together," I say to her quietly. "You need to readjust your thinking."
She whirls around and points a finger at me. "No, you need to readjust your thinking and let me out of here. I didn't agree to this, I didn't agree to any of this."
I take several long, measured steps toward her, slowly backing her up until her ass hits the edge of the solarium table. She reaches behind herself and grips it so hard that her knuckles turn white. Like it's a lifeline.
"I won't allow you to leave," I tell her, my eyes caressing every inch of her though I don't touch her. "This is your life now."
"I don't accept that," she says, a chill to her voice.
"Then our battle will continue," I say.
Her grey eyes take on a pained expression, but she nods. "It has to."
"That's where you're wrong. The war is in here." I tap her chest with my middle and forefinger, then I tap her temple. "And in here."