Even if she never let him slake his lust, Silas knew he’d be viciously content with the knowledge that she belonged to him and him alone.
“You’re asking me to put my magic, mylife,in your hands.” Petra looked positively queasy at the prospect. Silas could hardly blame her. He doubted he was any witch’s dream bondmate.
“Aren’t you already doing that?” He had his doubts about how serious her problem really was, butshecertainly believed the stakes were life and death. He wasn’t above using that belief to his advantage.
Petra looked away. For several long seconds, her attention drifted around the polished wood paneling of the office, as if she might find her answer there rather than sprawled in front of her, waiting, watching. She breathed deeply, once, before the tension in her features eased.
“You’re right,” she answered. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
Silas narrowed his eyes. “What doesn’t?”
“What I do with my life.” Petra shook her head slowly, a rhythmic movement that rippled her golden hair. It reminded him of sunlight glancing off the water of the creek that ran behind his parents’ house. So pretty. So unattainable.
“Fine. You can have it.”
His frown deepened.Where’s the fight?
“You’re gonna tie your soul to mine,” he said, skeptical, “and you’re gonna letmefilter your magic for you, something essential to keeping you alive for the next two or more centuries. Really.”
It was an unsettling thing, seeing a new mask slip over her face like that. In between one blink and another, Petra was colder, more serene, as she stepped away from him. When she replied, she was all business, as if she hadn’t just been too shocked to speak a moment ago. “Well, it’s not like I have very many options. It is getting to be that time for me, anyway.”
Smoothing her mass of hair over one shoulder, she offered him a cool, practiced smile. “However, I would request one thing: since thisissuch a big commitment, I can’t agree to it prior to getting what I want. I’m sure you understand.”
Something primal in him, rarely heard from, snapped its jaws at the thought of waiting.She could run,the animal snarled.She could try to get out of it.
Ridiculous,he reasoned.She’ll never escape me.
People had tried before — granted, no one he’d been so keen on keeping alive — but his reach was long, his resources endless, and his ruthlessness… well, that’s what made him so very good at his job.
“You can’t play with me, little goddess,” he warned. Silas stood up from the chair to tower over her, not necessarily because his height was often intimidating, but because he liked crowding her. Being near her. Feeling the heat that rolled off her body like the waves off blacktop in the summer. “You won’t win. I promise you won’t.”
Petra’s half-smile didn’t wane, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Those were blank. Two circles of perfect, empty blue. “That’s where you’re wrong about me, demon.”
“How is that?”
“I’m not playing to win.”
The primal thing went very still. Around the room, deep in the corners where soft sunlight couldn’t reach, shadows unfurled like the seeking arms of the damned. “Who are you afraid of, little goddess?”
“Is it a deal, then?”
Dissatisfaction again. That’s what he felt when she wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t justanswer.He hated the feeling and strove never to endure it, which was why he always did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted to.
But unraveling Petra’s secrets, bleeding into the cracks of her defenses, was a campaign of finesse, not hammer blows. That was why it would be so damn satisfying when he eventually got what he wanted.
I always do.
Maybe not right away. Maybe at great cost. Maybe people would die along the way. But Silas always, always got what he wanted.
His shadows, an extension of him and yet independent of him, wove around her delicate ankles, shackling her as he closed the space between them. Petra held perfectly still as he chucked her under the chin. “We have a deal. Your bond for my help. Now…” He pressed the tip of one claw into the cushion of her lower lip, rumbling, “Give me a name.”
Her lips moved, brushing the pad of his thumb. “The Protector of the Gloriae, Antonin Vanderpoel.”
Chapter Five
Petra had not beenthe first choice to take the position as High Priestess of St. Emaine’s cathedral. She hadn’t been in the top five, or ten, or even one hundred. In fact, she hadn’t made the list at all.
But her boss had.
