We were quiet for several seconds as we observed the destruction.
“If you wanted to come home with me, you only needed to ask,” he said.
I snorted. “You can hold your breath about that ever happening.”
“Why? Because Thomas showed you a few unwelcome truths?”
I hesitated in the act of tossing the book to the floor, eying the wood there. On one hand, Thomas owned the apartment. He was the one who would have to deal with the aggravation of fixing it when I moved out. On the other, I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t figure out a way to take the damages out of me, whether monetarily or by binding me ever tighter to him.
Yeah, it wasn’t worth chancing the book having another spontaneous combustion episode.
Liam ignored my preoccupation as I looked around the room for a better place to stash my current pain in the ass. He prowled along the perimeter, fiddling with the things I’d collected through the years, picking one up before placing it down and picking up another. He held up a glass ocean buoy I’d found when I was a kid on a trip to the ocean.
“We both know it’s only a matter of time,” he said, putting the buoy back down.
“Maybe before. Not anymore.”
With a sigh, I placed the book on an end table. It was the cheapest piece of furniture in the room. Replacing it would hurt, but not as much as if the book did permanent damage to my floors.
Liam brushed past me, his smell, the scent of a spring thunderstorm, wrapping around me as it danced along my senses.
I moved away from him. I didn’t need distractions and Liam was the biggest of them all.
“Believe me,a chuisle, you’ll be mine in the end. Fight it all you want,” Liam said, giving me a smile that invited sin and decadence. It was the type of smile meant to con a woman out of her underwear. The kind of look that said he’d give you a night you would never forget, a night you’d spend the rest of your life measuring other men against.
Despite what I knew of him, the anger I still had, his smile got to me. Just a little. Just enough that warmth filled me even as I brushed it off.
I arched my eyebrows and smirked. “You have an inflated sense of your irresistibility.”
His smile widened, a hint of fang peeking out, his eyes heavy-lidded. “There’s nothing inflated about me.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Sure, there wasn’t.
“What’s that?” Liam asked, his gaze going to the book on the table behind me.
“What’s what?” I asked, looking around the room.
“The book you just had in your hand.”
I glanced at the nightstand.
“Nothing. Have you finally tired of throwing yourself against my downstairs neighbor’s door?” I asked, stepping between Liam and the book, not fully recognizing what I was doing. There was this need, urgent and all-consuming, to prevent him getting a look at my book. To keep him from knowing, just what, I wasn’t sure.
Liam’s gaze sharpened. I fidgeted.
He relaxed. “I’m glad you mentioned that. When did you plan to tell me a deposed Fae lord and the captain of his guard had taken up residence in the apartments below you?”
I snorted. “Why ask questions you already know the answer to?”
He didn’t seem to appreciate that answer, his eyes darkening as he prowled closer, stopping just far enough away I couldn’t object to having my personal space violated as he examined the burn marks on my bed.
“I remember Niall of old. He is dangerous and always liked to play with his food before he ate it.”
And I suppose in that analogy, I was the food.
“Everyone is dangerous,” I told him. It was true. Compared to me, everyone was. Even Inara and Lowen could be deadly if they put their mind to it. Their magic, for one, was way out of my league.
“Are you sleeping with him?”
