Petra’s volume didn’t rise, but there was steel in her voice all the same when she declared, “I don’t believe that. Not about you, at least.”
“Baby,” he said, as gently as he was capable of, “you can’t fix me. It won’t work.”
“Did I say I wanted to?” Petra wiggled until there was enough room to glare at him. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, so he doubted she could really see him, but he felt that glare all the way down to his toes anyway. “Other people have tried to change you, Silas, but you’ll never hear that from me. I like you how you are, as fucked up as that might be. What I’m saying is that you’re wrong about your ability to care.”
He shook his head. “Petra, it’s not?—”
Doing a truly impressive impression of a demon, she growled, “No, you listen to me. I want you to tell me to my face that you don’t care about me. Go on. Do it.”
Silas reared his head back to give an incredulous look. His stomach turned. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because— because I don’t want to.”
“You don’t want to or you can’t?” Before he could figure out the answer himself, she arched her neck to deliver a swift, brutal kiss. Speaking into his mouth, she hissed, “You care about me. You can deny it until you’re ready, but it’s the truth. If you didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be alive. You wouldn’t be holding me like you’re afraid I’ll disappear. You just wouldn’t.”
“What if I can’t ever give you more than this?” He didn’t even realize the fear existed, deep and thorny inside of him, until the words left his mouth.What if I’m a bad mate? What if I hurt you?
They shared breath, their world so small and dark and perfect in that tiny blanket fort. Their bodies were a tangle andtheir words were harsh but soft, like bristles of velvet brushed the wrong way.
Petra’s lips softened, but her ferocity didn’t. “Then I’ll take everything else you have to give me.”
Chapter Forty-One
Petra satat Silas’s feet in the living room. Arrayed around her were the trunks he’d stolen, some of them opened and others not. She felt slimy pawing through them, seeing all the names of people whose lives had been held in the palm of Antonin’s hand. Originally she’d set up in the middle of the floor, but when Silas sat down to work on the decryption on the couch, she’d inched her way over until she leaned against his leg.
Things had been bizarrely peaceful since their talk in the blanket fort the previous night. Petra knew it was a peace that wouldn’t last, and not just because his rut brewed like a storm on the horizon. Her problems didn’t disappear just because they were tucked away in the wilderness somewhere. But when she was with him, she felt like her feet were on solid ground for the first time in years. The world might continue to spin around her, but when Silas held her, she wouldn’t spin with it.
Not when she was his mate, and not when he fisted his hand around her ponytail and tilted her head back like that.
She blinked up at him, lust curling in her belly at the light sting in her scalp. He watched her from under heavy lids, his tablet loosely held in his other hand, and murmured, “I fuckin’ love it when you look up at me like that.”
“Like what?”
His grip tightened, forcing the arch of her neck into a sharper angle. “When you’re at my feet and you look up at me like you’d let me do anything to you.”
“I like how you look at me, too,” she admitted.
“Yeah? Tell me how I look at you.”
“Like you want to eat me.”
A low rumbling sound erupted from his chest — not quite a growl and not quite a purr, but something in the middle. “You have no idea how much I want to eat you, baby.”
Her heart thumped unevenly in her chest. Speaking with more bravado than she felt, she challenged, “Why don’t you?”
Silas set his tablet aside and leaned over her. The hand not tangled in her ponytail cupped the side of her head as he skimmed his lips over hers. “Because, little goddess,” he whispered, “if I get another taste of that pretty pussy, it’ll send me straight into rut. And then I’ll fuck you until you beg me to let you rest.”
She hardly breathed. Heat flashed over her skin as her magic bubbled inside of her, mixing with lust to make a potent cocktail of power and desire. A keen longing made her want to provoke him, to make his filthy promises a reality.
There’d been so much relief in giving him power over her. Everything went soft and out of focus when he used her, moved her, fucked her mouth until she gagged. Petra had only gotten to experience that freedom so briefly in the cathedral. She wanted that peace back with a sudden, piercing ache.
“Will you?”
His tongue snaked out to taste her bottom lip. “Will I what?”
“Will you let me rest if I beg you?”
