Chapter Twelve
Still chuckling,Silas climbed out of his car and circled around to open her door. Petra didn’t move. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t do anything at all except say, in a flat voice, “Nothing in this world could compel me to go into that house with you.”
“Baby.” He crouched down next to her and gently extracted the paper bag and empty bottle from her hands. Setting it down in the footwell, he grabbed her calves and guided her legs out until the tips of her little black boots touched his thighs. “How much do you want that information from Vanderpoel?”
She still wouldn’t look at him, but she couldn’t hide the way her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Not enough to do that.”
It took him a second to follow her train of thought. Silas blinked. “That’s not part of the deal.”
Petra’s lips went thin and bloodless. It took her a second to find the words, but when she did, they were brimming with venom. “Isn’t it? When you say things like that, what am I supposed to think? Apparently you have all the control here and now you’re saying you want to fuck me. That makes it part of the deal.”
Silas really had to think about that. Normally he never mixed sex with business, so it hadn’t occurred to him that he was doing exactly that. To him, fucking his little goddess and making a deal with Petra were two different things. Two straight lines running in the same direction, perhaps, but they never touched.
Something oily and uncomfortable squirmed in his gut the longer he looked at her rigid body language.She feels powerless.
He wanted that. He liked knowing he’d bent Glory’s favorite to his will, that she’d take food from his hand, that she might come begging on her knees for a taste of demon cock.
But, he realized with an unsettling jolt, he didn’t want it to beforced.
None of it would satisfy him unless she wanted to give him the power, because what attracted him to Petrawasher power. He wanted her to hand it over to him because he valued it,her,so very much.
It didn’t appear she noticed that even at that moment, he was knelt before her. She didn’t know that he was asking, not taking, nor that by doing so, he was freely admitting how much power she had overhim.
He thought she understood the game, but like with everything else involving her, Silas had apparently miscalculated.
Masks and secrets and more.Every time he thought he knew her, Petra revealed something new facet that threw him off balance.
“Look at me.”
When she stubbornly refused, he grabbed one of her ankles and gave it a good wiggle. “Petra, give me your eyes.”
Bless her, she did try to kick him then, which was exactly what he wanted. With her extended leg caught in his grip, she couldn’t help but glare at him, her brows turned down and her soft mouth pinched.
“You need to understand something,” he told her in a voice as close to gentle as he could get. “You are one of the very few people in this world who can say no to me.”
He understood why she looked at him like he’d grown a different set of horns, but he really didn’t appreciate it.
“I’vebeensaying no!”
“I mean about everythingotherthan our deal,” he amended. “That’s set in stone. Your bond is mine, Petra, and the methods I use to fulfill our bargain aren’t up for debate.”
“Then how?—”
He gave her ankle a squeeze. “Let me finish before you give me a dressing down, woman.”
The look she gave him could have peeled paint. He loved it.
It was hard work suppressing his grin when he continued, “Our deal is our deal, but it also means two things: first, that I need you alive, and second, that if I’m going to be stuck with you for the rest of my life, then you can’t hate metoomuch.”
He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her besides her bond and the deeply satisfying knowledge that she belonged to him alone, but hate wasn’t it.
“I get a thrill out of fuckin’ with you, but the only reason it’s fun is because you’re a powerful woman. You are aHigh Priestess.Every room you’re in, you shine so bright you blind everyone else. You’re a gloriana with the ability to wield fuckin’light.You think I want you beaten down or backed into a corner, giving me whatever I want because you’re scared?”
Silas leaned into the passenger’s side of the car. Bracing his hands on either side of her thighs, he pressed his lips against the shell of her ear and breathed in the scent of her ridiculous glamoured hair. “Baby, the fun comes from knowing youwantme to have the power. I’d like nothing more than to know for a fuckin’ fact that you are desperate for my cock. I want to know I own a goddess — body and soul.”
She began to breathe faster. He was desperate to see the look in her eyes, but he held himself there through will alone. Silas intended to settle something between them tonight, and though he hadn’t thought of this before, he realized it was vitally important they get this straight, too.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll never force you,” he promised.
