Slightly perplexed by how she made it across the beach so quickly, and a bit miffed that she disobeyed me, I shake my head at the sight and step past the mangled gate into Yazmin’s lush gardens.
Down the flagstone walkway, at the edge of the wisteria arbor, stands a tall, slender woman whose curves I have memorized like a map. I scrub the rain from my eyes with the back of my sleeve, taking it all in. Her back is to me, her arms stretched wide as her long, blonde curls, wet and slithering like glistening snakes, whip in the chilly wind. She’s surrounded by a soft violet halo of magick that reflects against every raindrop.
Lightning fractures the gray morning sky as six men fight to reach Nephele from within a cage of tangled wisteria branches, stabbing their swords and daggers through the gaps and calling her names as she weaves and tightens her terrifying prison of woody limbs around them. One nearly reaches her, but she uses the branches to snatch his sword and rip it from his hands.
“That’s your third mistake,” she says, her voice baleful. “I dare you to make another.”
The branches holding the man’s sword unfurl like an offering hand, from which Nephele accepts the weapon. With her pale locks still writhing wildly around her head, she plunges the blade into the cage, right into the man’s shoulder.
His scream and an unholy curse break through the gardens. The wound isn’t a fatal one. But it’ll make him miserable enough that her warning will now ring clear.
Silently, I sheathe my sword and stand in awe of her—Nephele and her cages. A warrior witch who likes to trap things, and if the moment calls for it, make her victims suffer.
I don’t hate seeing her like this. In fact, as her power swirls around her, a power I feel dancing on my skin, and as I sense the growing violence within her, it only strokes my beast. Not because she’s angry and in a protective enough state to be absolutely venomous, but because she will do anything for the people she cares about, and woe is the fool who crosses her.
Fuck, I want her. Her goodness and her malevolence.
Without so much as a hint that she’s finished with these bastards, her power dissipates, melting into the night as though it was never there. She holds up the man’s sword and stares at its blood-stained tip as the rain drenching us washes away the crimson, leaving only wet steel behind.
“I don’t fear anything,” I say, loudly enough that she can hear me over the storm. “But you’re beginning to make me wonder if I should.”
Her mental wards slam up around her mind, but then she crooks her head and turns on her heel, twisting to face me with a sharply arched brow. “The answer isyes. In case you need help figuring that much out.”
I arch my brow right back at her, my gaze locked on her swaying hips as she saunters like a siren toward me, as though she didn’t just cage six men inside a bush, stab one of them, and leave him bleeding in the rain.
“Someone’s quite saucy considering she disobeyed a direct order and somehow got herself all the way from the eastern side of the beach to this veranda faster than me. That might require truth-telling, and maybe even a little discipline.”
I watch her closely as she takes a deep inhale and studies me. From my wet hair to the glowing orbs of my eyes to my brutal fangs and the razor claws curling from my hands. It’s almost as though she’s looking for something.
But so am I. And I find it. She’s nervous. She has something to hide. But my attention doesn’t cling to that knowledge for long, because her desire is thick and heady and wafting from her body in waves.
I breathe her in, finding her need so easily, even from under the scents of a turbulent sea churning up a downpour.
“How I got here is none of your business,” she says, blinking away the water droplets clinging to her eyelashes. “And just try to discipline me. You’ll end up in a cage just like them. I put you inside one days ago. I can put you there again.”
Itsk. “There you go inviting me to do things you know I’ll do. Things youwantme to do.”
She scoffs. “In your dreams.”
“Most certainly. Because every time you look at me, especially when you’re trying to be furious, I feel what you really want.This,” I say as I gesture to my face and all the preternatural things that come with it, “arouses you.Iarouse you. The thought of me consuming you arouses you. Your pussy is so hot right now you’d drag me into a cozy little corner of this garden and mount me in a heartbeat, lightning and thunder be damned.” I crook a smile, even as thunder rolls. “I bet you’d rather like a little discipline then.”
She swings her hand up to strike me, but I catch her wrist. Her chest rises and falls hard, and she adjusts the slick hilt in her opposite hand. “You might be a god, wolf. But you need to remember that I’m the woman to whose whims you are bound, by deal and honor, until I draw my last breath. Lest you forget who has control.”
Mouth quirked, I rake my gaze over her from head to foot and back again. “I know my place well. At your side. But I didn’t need you for all this.” I glance toward her cage before meeting her eyes again, then I lower her hand, keeping my fingers wrapped firmly around her wrist. I lean in close enough for a kiss, my lips curled back over my fangs. “I wastryingto keep you safe because you’ve been ill, you unappreciative little witch.” No sooner than I say those words, the full force of her need punches me in the face. I stare at her, searching her eyes, a little stunned. “See? I’m being a complete ass right now, and yet your scent is as potent as a field of dark red roses. So maybe the question is, whoreallyhas control here?”
She all but bares her teeth, scraping them over her wet, plump bottom lip, making me want to suck it into my mouth, to learn what she tastes like wet and drenched in the scent of petrichor.
“I’m hot from the heat of a fight,” she spits, jerking her wrist from my hold. “Not because of you. That notion ends tonight.” Something flashes across her eyes. Something I’m not sure I recognize at first. But then I realize it’s… hurt. “You left me behind. After telling Colden that I can take care of myself,you left me behind. I suppose I’m only powerful enough to make my own godsdamn decisions when it suits you.”
I swallow, speechless for a long moment. The only words I can find are, “As I said, I was trying to keep you safe.”
“Why?” she shouts, and on the edges of her voice, I hear the others shuffling up the steps from the beach. “I’m not a fragile flower, wolf. I don’tneedyour protection. I don’t need anyone’s protection. Icantake care of myself.” She points the tip of her new sword at my face. “You admitted as much. And then you left me anyway. So maybe you need to figure out why you suddenly don’t believe that anymore. Why suddenly, you think I need a hero. I’m my own fucking hero. Don’t forget it.”
She walks past me, smacking her shoulder against my arm. As she passes and heads down the stone steps to meet the others, I close my eyes against the slashing rain, letting it pelt my face as I tighten my lips and groan out a sigh, wondering why indeed I feel so compelled to shelter her.
And because I don’t have an answer—not one I’m prepared to face at least—I stand there, the pressure inside me matching that of the rising torrent coming in off the sea, and let her go.
13
