“Why did you go, then?” he asked, his voice echoing in the space as I put one foot in front of the other.
“I beg your pardon?” I asked, my psyche getting whiplash from his turn of behavior.
“With Wanda and Norman. Do you desire them?” he asked.
I felt put off by the question, considering everything we’d just been through.
Was coming all over your lap not a clear enough indication?
“Not that it is any of your business...” I started, hearing the tone of my voice in the cavernous space.
I sounded different.
Bossy, sassy.
Confident.
It was strange to hear myself in such a manner, but Bane seemed to bring out a side of me I’d never known.
I was hungry all right, but it wasn’t just for food.
I wanted his approval.
But I also wanted him to realize he was being an idiot.
I didn’t give myself to anyone. Even if I had options—which was slim, but beside the point—I had always been raised to be selective. Choosing a mate, a partner was about more than just sexual compatibility, and I had always garnered that I’d know the right person when I met them.
I may have crashed into Bane like a meteor, and I barely knew him in the logical sense, but...
Call it premonition, call it fate, call it twenty years worth of wishing on a star, but I knew there was more to him than what he displayed for the world to see. I’d seen it in my vision, and in the depths of his gaze.
Felt it when my magic latched onto him.
His pain, his heartache, his lust for more, and his words only cemented what I could surmise from an uncanny sense of intuition.
The creature of lust, it seemed, singularly wanted to be the subject of desire himself.
“But no, I don’t. Desire them. Either of them, but—”
“There’s always a but,” Bane murmured.
“Norman’s tentacles are kind of cool. I could see the appeal...”
“Please, he might have extra appendages, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to useanyof them,” he bit.
Was he... jealous?
I wasn’t sure, being as I’d never been in this situation before, but something inside me told me the answer wasyes.
And a part of melikedthat.
The idea of Bane all flustered because of me.
Because hedesiredme.
“Well, perhaps I’ll just have to find out myself,” I teased as we came up to the end of the staircase.
What the hell was wrong with me?
