They were playing a game of cat and mouse. It was well past time she showed him that he wasn’t dealing with some soft, pampered priestess who shook in her vestments whenever he said something crude.
She was a motherfucking witch, and she’d bite any hand that dared hold her leash.
Chapter Ten
It was a dim sum restaurant.
Petra wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected when she snuck out of the secret passageway in her suite, but a cheerfully lit, hole-in -the-wall restaurant with a cartoon dumpling dancing across vid screens in its windows wasn’t it. That should have been her first tip-off that something was wrong.
The second, she realized too late, was the low purr of a well-tuned engine.
It happened too fast for her to scream, and even if it hadn’t, she couldn’t have risked it. One moment she stood on the curb, trying to peer past the glare of over-bright screens showing tempting dishes she would have liked to try on any other night, the cartoon dumpling bouncing between each one like a cheerful little rubber ball, and the next an arm banded around her middle and darkness shrouded her eyes.
Within a handful of seconds she was thrown in a car, her wrists and ankles locked together by something insubstantial and yet unbreakable.
“If you were hungry, you should have met me earlier.” The deep, southern drawl of Shade’s voice was too loud in thedark cocoon he’d wrapped around her. Petra thrashed, magic bubbling beneath her skin, as he pulled away from the curb.
Willfully misinterpreting her struggles, he added, “I did text you asking you what you wanted, but you didn’t reply, so I just got you some tea. I’ll let you have it if you promise not to throw it in my face. I don’t want to have to get this car detailed again.”
A heavy hand, hot and familiar, settled on her thigh. “Will you be good, little goddess?”
I’m going to kill you,she silently promised, nodding.I’m going to burn your cock off like a hot dog left on a fucking grill.
“Good girl,” he praised. It didn’t sound like he really believed her, but rather that he found the situation funny. Giving her thigh a little squeeze, he cajoled, “Remember, girls who keep their promises get rewards.”
She couldn’t evenbeginto imagine what kind of reward it would require for her to ever, in a million years, willingly follow the sociopath’s directions, but Petra didn’t say that. She couldn’t, not with his shadows sealed over her eyes and mouth like ethereal duct tape.
The shadows lifted. Petra reacted on pure instinct and fury.
Without thinking, she twisted to throw a punch directly at the side of his smug head.
Shade caught it, of course. He held her fist in his much bigger hand and shot her a disapproving look. “Really? When I’m driving? If we get in a car crash, it’s not me who’ll die. You’re the fragile one, baby.”
Baby?Petra showed him her teeth. “Youkidnappedme!”
“Only a little.” He pried her rigid fist apart with his thumb —just his thumb —and brought her palm to his mouth for a searing kiss.
That simple, shocking contact of lips and scraping teeth, was more terrifying than being shoved, blind and gagged, into a car. Petra gasped and jerked her arm. Her magic, already hot androiling, surged toward that small point of connection until it seared her palm, desperate to be free.
Shade let out a hiss as his face was suddenly bathed in a yellow-orange glow. “Like trying to kiss the fuckin’ sun,” he muttered, going in for another like it was some mad challenge.
“Do that again and I’ll burn your lips off,” she snapped.
Those amber-on-black eyes cast her a heavy-lidded look even as he lowered her hand to rest onhisthigh, dangerously close to bits she was certain he didn’t want scorched. “I like that you’ve got claws, little goddess.”
It would have been wonderful to react, to have some quick retort to wipe the smug, lustful look off of his handsome face, but she didn’t. For a moment, she could only sit there and gape at him.
She didn’t even have the presence of mind to take her hand off of his tense thigh when she noted, “Something is seriously wrong with you, Shade.”
And there was clearly something, perhaps many somethings, seriously wrong with her, too, because,gods help her,she was almost certain her panties were wet.
The way his grin widened in that slow, unspooling way as his nostrils flared all but confirmed it long before he drawled, “I think you like that about me about as much as I like it aboutyou,little goddess.”
She knew that her childhood, the way her parents had raised her and the people they associated with — Max excluded — had probably predisposed her to finding certain less-than-societally-acceptable traits attractive, but it was a humbling thing, actually experiencing it.
“Any attraction I might have to you is strictly involuntary and immediately canceled out by how much I’m learning to hate you.”
“Nah, it’s not. Your body knows I’ll be a good fuck. She’s just gotta wait your head out.” Shade lifted the hand that had been loosely covering her own on his thigh to reach behind him. His eyes never left the road as he pulled a small paper bag out from the back seat and dropped it unceremoniously into her lap. “Drink your tea and buckle up.”
