Persius politely raised his hand from the doorway and asked, “Can someone please tell me what is going on?”
Bael finished tying Nix’s left leg to the last bedpost and stepped back to admire his handywork. “Nix lied about how she knew what kind of shifter Persius was.”
Persius exhaled and scratched at his left pectoral muscles. “She really knows what I am? How?”
“That—” Bael grabbed at the back of his shirt, tore it over his head, and flung it to the floor. “—is what we are going to find out.”
The incubus unbuckled his pants and stepped out of them, leaving him standing in nothing but black boxers.
“You tie my mate down, and now you are stripping?” Thierry asked ominously, his fists clenching at his sides.
Bael’s black webbed wings stretched from his back, branching out and sparkling with a carmine, ruby-like dust. Bael’s black horns sprang from his head and curled sinisterly. His red eyes became big, enlarged black pupils.
His fully shifted incubus form.
Thierry quickly looked away, having learned the threat of eye contact with him in that form.
“She lied when given the choice,” Bael said around his sharp, distended fangs. “Now, we find out the truth.”
“You think she is a spy?” Persius asked, stepping further into the room to watch the scene. “She is a friend of Elle Oadess. The adoptive daughter of Kellan.”
“She just told us she wanted to kill Oadess,” Thierry reminded them. “She is not a spy for them.”
Bael climbed on top of her on the bed. He straddled her thighs and spread out his wings. “Nixie, time to wake up, baby,” Bael cooed to her as he projected hypnotic spirals from his eyes.
CHAPTER 14
When Nix’s eyes blinked open, her sleepy gaze settled right onto mesmerizing spirals. “Mmm?” She watched through heavy eyelids as the beautiful, hypnotic design spun over Bael’s large, pitch-black pupils.
“That’s it.” His primal horns gleamed as he licked his lips. “Look right into my eyes, baby,” Bael urged her in a low-bass voice at a frequency that speared right through her thoughts. “Fall into the spirals. Don’t they spin so prettily for you? Don’t they just swallow up your every thought?”
Nix struggled to think as she stared into the twisting and turning black and red.
SLEEPY. LISTEN. OBEY.
She shivered on the bed. It was so soft under her bare body…
“Don’t they just overpower your mind with how they go around and around, sucking your every thought away?”
“Mmm.” Nix lightly squirmed. “Yes…” Wait, what was happening? Didn’t Bael just…
His eyes flashed with a bright, dazzling red light for a second, grabbing her attention. “That’s it. Can’t even think when you’re looking into my eyes. Not unless I tell you to think.”
SUBMIT. RELAX. OBEY.
Nix’s brows furrowed as she felt ropes around her wrists and ankles. She tugged on a leg, trying to squeeze her thighs together, but she couldn’t.
“Uh, uh. You don’t need to worry about the ropes.” His low voice was sodeepas he rasped, “The ropes are here to keep you nice and settled and calm.”
He urged, “Just keep staring right into my eyes, following down with the spirals. Feel them take away your every worry. You like the ropes. They help you from floating away. Because my eyes are making you feel so light and floaty andrelaxed.”
“Mmhmm.” Nix wiggled again, but this time she did not fight the ropes. Her bare skin on the silk sheets just felt sogood. So serene. So calming.
“So relaxing,” Bael whispered to her. “That’s it. That’s such a good girl. Such a good listener when I tell you how you can’t think. So submissive when I tell you to feel a certain way. Like how calm and relaxed you are. How open to my suggestions you are.”
Bael flexed his midnight-colored wings and dragged the dulled curve of a sharp, black wingtip pinion over the curve of her left breast. He pressed the cool, thick nail to her nipple. “It feels so good under my control, doesn’t it?”
“Mmhmm.”
