“Nah,” the male said, his lips curling in distaste. “Never seen him before in my life.” Then he glanced down at me, his displeasure still there, and strode off.
I shoved at Lothar’s chest, pushing him away. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” he asked as if butter wouldn’t melt.
“You know what you did,” I fumed. “We may as well leave. No one will talk to us now. You made me look like a manipulative asshole. You piss off the locals, everyone else will clam the hell up. Goddammit, Lothar.” I strode off, through the crowd and out onto the street.
He followed, seeming unruffled, pleased with himself in fact, and that just infuriated me more.
“You’re acting like a crazy person. You see that, right?” I fired at him.
“He didn’t know shit. He just wanted in your pants, and you were fucking falling for it,” he said, looking arrogant as hell.
“I wasn’t falling for anything! He had a freaking foot on his plate, Lothar. I was using his attraction to me against him. That’s literally what I do. You know this, we’ve already had this argument.”
His eyes were still red and showed no sign of changing. “I don’t like it, Roxy. I don’t like males using you that way, and you can’t make me believe different.”
“Dickhead.” I stormed off, because I was out of fight right then. We’d argued our way across three realms, and I was fucking exhausted.
He said nothing else, just followed me to the inn and up to our room. I didn’t talk to him as I grabbed my things and changed in the bathroom, and I continued to say nothing when I walked out and found him bare-chested and lying in bed with his hands behind his head.
Flicking off the light with more force than was necessary, I got in beside him and thumped my arm down on the covers between us several times, creating an invisible boundary, then squeezed my eyes closed.
We lay there in silence for several long minutes, and every second that passed, the tension in the room grew. Maybe it was just me, but I was positive I could feel a restlessness rolling off Lothar, as if he were coiling tighter and tighter, about to burst out of bed—or something.
I jumped when he suddenly did just that. He shoved the covers back, bounded out, stalked to the window, and shoved it open. He dragged in a deep breath, then another.
“What are you doing? It’s cold.”
“I need it open,” he grumbled.
“Well, I need it closed. This realm drops in temperature overnight. We’ll freeze.”
“You’ll be fine,” he said and strode to the wardrobe, opened it, dragged down another comforter, then threw it on top of me before getting back in bed.
I lay there, confused and now cold. “I can feel a draft. I’ll get frostbite on the end of my nose at this rate,” I said, tugging the covers higher. “What’s the problem? It’s not like it’s hot in here.”
“Drop it,” he said and tucked his hands behind his head again.
“Drop what? Your weird need to turn me into an ice statue?”
He said nothing.
“Is it the cleaning products they use?” I breathed deep. “It just smells fresh to me.”
He continued to say nothing.
“So it is the smell?”
“Drop it, Roxy,” he said again.
“Is it me?” I said, joking, and made a show of smelling my pits, and as expected, they were fine.
He was back to not answering.
I froze. “Lothar?”
Silence.
