“How doyou?”
She sniffed, setting the bucket at her feet and wiping a hand across her forehead. She grinned up at me. “Let’s just continue asking each other questions and never getting any answers. I like this game.”
My nostrils flared. She smelled sofuckinggood, and I had to take a step back when my mouth flooded with venom, nearly stumbling over an exposed root in my haste.
Turning from her, I forced myself to bite out, “This is your doing?”
I gestured toward the decrepit furniture and the door hanging off one hinge.
“Yes,” she said behind me, finally giving in and answering me.
“Why?” I asked.
Millie’s scent grew stronger as she approached, stepping up next to me, lugging the heavy bucket forward.
“Why not?” she asked, shrugging. “No one has lived here for years—that much is obvious. It needs care. Sometimes houses are like people. You need to love them even if it’s hard. If you care for them, they will care for you. It just might take time and patience to get there.”
Unwanted affection mingled with the hot irritation I was struggling to keep tightly leashed.
“Is this what you were looking for?” I pondered. “In the archives? You said you wanted a map of Stellara. Was it to find this place?”
She cocked her head innocently. There was a brief narrowing of her eyes, and Raazos’s blood, I felt my cock twitch at the sight. She wascalculatingthis situation. She was calculatingme.
“Why?” she asked, her tone deceptively breezy, her smile widening. “Would this cottage be of interest to me?”
We both heard my thick swallow.
She suspected that I knew why she would be here. But she wanted to hear me say it, and I refused to give her that satisfaction. This was a side of her I’d not witnessed yet, and it was stunningly…arousing. Itwaslike a game.
We could both play pretend.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said, my tone silken. “But you’ve obviously started to make yourself at home here when you don’t have the right to.”
Her smile dropped. Her jaw set.
“I researched Erzos law in the archives,” she told me. “No oneownsStellara, not even you, though it borders your keep’s land. Which means I can live wherever I please within its boundaries.”
“Unless the structure itself and the immediate land surrounding it is owned,” I informed her.
Millie froze. “What?”
Flashing my growing fangs, I gave her a sharp grin.
“Let’s not play games anymore, little Seren. We both know who lived in this cottage,” I rasped. Her lips pressed together. “As such, the home and the surrounding land belongs to House Kaalium. As it lies within Erzos, it belongs tome.”
Her own nostrils flared.
“Is that so?” she asked, tilting her head back to glare. If it could quite be called that. Her face was too round, too soft to be considered fierce or frightening. “I don’t believe you.”
I barked out a disbelieving laugh, crossing my arms over my chest. “You don’tbelieveme? Why would I lie?”
When I stepped closer, her eyes narrowed, flitting briefly to the silver catches on my vest before flying back up to my face.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she repeated, throwing my mocking words back at me. Andvaan, if it didn’t make me want to push her back onto the black moss and rip those two-sizes-too-big pants off her.
Her spine was stiff. Shewasangry. Scared too, I realized, smiling like a predator who’d just scented the rich, delicious blood of its prey. She knew I could take this place away from her. What would she give me to keep it?
“You cannot intimidate me,Kyzaire,” she emphasized. She tucked her chin closer to her chest. “I don’t have to yield to you.”
