21
MALICE
Malice doesn’t know what has gotten into him. When he woke, it felt like he would die if he didn’t touch Aerin. If he didn’thaveher. Something possessed his body, his mind. All he wanted was control, over her body, over her soul. He’s always been domineering in bed, but stoic. Not like that, with every emotion rushing to the surface like a surging river. Gods, the way he gripped her face…
His cock doesn’t agree with his mind.
Aerin didn’t seem to agree with his mind either. The scent of her arousal overwhelmed him, made every logical thought fuzzy and far away. The hot water of the shower pounds on his back, one hand bracing against the wall and the other tugging on his cock.
He can’t clear his mind of her. How her body responded to his. The feel of her pressed against him. The way she’d rolled her hips over his thigh, grinding her core against him. The breathy noises that escaped from her mouth. Then her lips, how she eagerly opened for him. The excitement in her eyes when he gripped her face harshly. He pictures guiding his cockinto that mouth, her luscious lips wrapping around him. Aerin, worshippinghim.
Malice shoots cum across the shower wall, feeling sick with himself. After his shuddering fades, he presses both hands to the cold tile, letting his head hang between them, water dripping from his hair.
What the fuck is wrong with him? Is this what the blood-bond does? Shatters every bit of self-restraint he has?
Yes, he’s always been attracted to Aerin Tolvare.
But he doesn’twantto be with her. Doesn’t want to want her. Their kiss before was only because shepushedhim. She’s always pushing him. He loathes her beauty, her curves, her conniving nature. She is selfish and spoiled and rotten to her core. Isn’t she?
Malice is even less sure than before. Repeating his mantra feels like a betrayal. Yet he should despise her more now that she trapped him into a lifelong bond simply because she couldn’t mind her own business.
He doesn’t.
Scrubbing his hair with shampoo, Malice lets out a brusque exhale. It must be the blood-bond settling. He’ll get better control over it. Just as he does everything else.
As he scrubs his body, rougher than he needs to, Malice feels her, just there, between his ribs. To the left of his heart. Like a piece of her living inside of him. He rubs the spot thoughtlessly, about jumping out of his skin when his body responds with a shiver and his cock springs back to life. As if he’d just touchedher.
Fuck.
Malice snatches his hand away, turns the shower to cold, and attempts to scrub any remnants of the last twenty-four hours from his skin.
When Malice shoveshis shame down far enough to swallow facing Aerin again, he leaves his room. The smell of Aerin’s blood smacks him in the face so hard his heart leaps into his throat and he finds himself scrambling out of the hall to find her.
He skids to a stop so fast he would have toppled over if it wasn’t for his wings. The smellisAerin’s blood; it drips off her fingers to the floor from a slow healing gash on her forearm. Aerin is repeatedly dipping her fingers into the wound, coating them before painting runes on the wall in front of her.
Instead of roaring at her for such recklessness, Malice schools himself. Locks everything down inside, shuts it behind door after door until that rage feels far from him, hardly a part of him at all.
Aerin paints the last of the runes on the massive windows that line the walls of the living room. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, the sight would be terrifying. Bloody symbol after bloody symbol crosses the expanse of the entire room. Across every window, around the front door.
Malice knows exactly what they are: wards. Protective magic. Aerin is imbuing the apartment with her own runes, her own magic. She is negating the wards the King placed, cancelling them out with her own.
After painting the final rune, the symbols glow golden before sinking into the walls. The only blood left is in the spots on the floor, the slow drip off her fingertips.
“Don’t you think you’ve bled enough today?” Malice asks her as she dips her fingers in her arm again, poised to paint more runes.
Aerin looks at him over her shoulder, a small smile gracing her features. Malice hates how beautiful she is, he really, really does.
She turns back to the window before speaking to him.
“I need you to do a sweep of the apartment. I want every camera, every microphone of my father’s gone.” She keeps painting. “He will no longer be privy to us.”
“What’s changed?” Malice asks her. It can’t just be their newly forged blood-bond giving her the confidence to defy the King of Valtara.
“I’ll explain later,” Aerin tells him, her concentration not the least bit broken. Malice doesn’t like her bleeding, feels sick with it.
Much of Malice wants to ignore her request until he gets his answers, but he begrudgingly begins dismantling the closest camera. It doesn’t take him long to strip the apartment, dropping the tiny cameras onto the table as he goes. He fishes a detector out of his things and does three full sweeps before he’s satisfied that he found them all.
While he works, Aerin continues to place wards. First protection wards, then noise wards, down to the cleaning wards. She replaces every single one of her father’s, erasing all hints of his magic from inside the apartment.
