She was in exactly the right state. Probably. Thinking, but lure-affected.
Set this out, carefully, step by step. He stood and retrieved the notepad and pen.
“Cyn, I thought this through. I would like you to sign an agreement. If I wait, bad things will happen to you. Worse than me.” Well, that was his opinion. “Here are the facts as I see them.He felt like an insurance salesman and was positive he was doing this all wrong.
Fuck, he wasn’t into speeches. Not when sex was involved.
Little Mo observedfrom its perch high above the floor with its claws wrapped about a cable. Instructions said to report back to Big Daddy when she found a home. It had done so before when she’d remained on the top floor, then returned to record her for years, though having to overwrite some data to squeeze in the new days.
Most of that time she spent eating and helping others to grow crops in the sun, until the final day when she was called to a Ghoul Lord. When Cyn severed a tentacle, a strange energy had spiked within Little Mo’s core. That had been satisfying.
It clenched its tiny claws and made them sink into the insulation of the cable.
Was this her new home? It decided the answer was no, and it squatted lower and waited. Though solar energy would help Little Mo regain power, it had reserves.
Wait. Yes. And watch.
7
Cyn listenedwith her mouth parted, with him looming over her, shuffling from foot to foot at times, and the Lure was there, shining in from the side. Glistening. She knew exactly which way to go, if she was free.
But Vargr’s words rumbled through her brain too.
“At the tribe someone will claim you. You’re pretty and…”
“You want to know who you are, and I can…”
“… my sister is up there along with the rest of humankind.”
He faded in and out with the Lure, but she sensed the meaning, found his hesitancy quaint despite the seriousness of this. Wide-eyed, ears singing with a high distant tone, she listened more intently with every second.
The Lure was fading.
Vargr stepped nearer. His wings flared, now and then, with the red light behind him that lit this place creating a pretty aura above and around the beaster. He was, bluntly, impressive. To her. A siren call to her ovaries.He is also forbidden.Cyanide to her kryptonite. Bugspray to her zombie butterfly. And she wasn’t making sense in this, yet everything congealed into one beauteous, dark, message.Touch me and regret it, was scribedin every shift of muscle, every breath he took, in every word he spoke.
And yet her hands shook. She wanted him.
Fuck, he was gorgeous.
She blinked then woke a little more from the glamor of the Lure.
She wondered if he knew he punctuated his words with wing flutters. Those giant, grey-black feathers belonged on a god in a painting, a glorious bird, or an angel. He was such a pretty man-beast. Shimmery blue dots pulsed along the feather vanes like runway lights telling a plane where to land.
“Mmm.” She encouraged him with small noises. All this was because he wanted to fuck her, and she’d saidnoto that before. Except now was different. The Lure made it so.
If she went to the tribe and stayed, someone would claim her.Truth.
If she left them, travelled on her own, the monsters he listed sounded daunting. There were nanite-mutated dogs as well as the stinkers and wild animals. Facing the Lure alone would be even more terrible. Would she climb up and be the Ghoul Lord’s prey again, eaten, chewed up, spat out as bones? This was life and death. Hers.
And Vargr was so pretty. Why not?
He’d help her find out who she was and who she had been before the world sort-of ended. For some reason, and it was probably the handwritten contract in the notebook, she believed him.
One huge problem—she didn’t want to be his forever, or bound to anyone forever. Her distaste at that surged. She grimaced. Owned due to whatever chemical change this induced in her body?
“No.”
“What?” His thunderously thick eyebrows angled and met in the middle.
