“As if I don’t know,” I tell her. Gripping her hair tight, I lean over to kiss her, and she meets me halfway. “Do your worst, witch,” I whisper, smiling against her mouth. “Make me suffer.”
“Oh, I intend to, wolf.” She drags that sweet, pink tongue across my lips and bares her fangs as she kisses her way back toward my cock. “I’m going to find out what it takes to make you howl.”
31
NEPHELE
The next morning, I wake in Neri’s strong arms, only his arms look quite different. I peer up at him to find that he’s groggily awake, actually having slept.
“Are these your marks?” I trace my finger over the archaic and somewhat runic lines covering his arm and chest, even flaring up the sides of his neck like black wings. “They’re beautiful.”
He smiles, and it makes something low in my belly curl. “They are. My adurna. I noticed them last night when you first went to sleep.” He holds up his hand. “I can’t honestly say why they returned. I only know that adurna are earned, so perhaps I’ve done something to put me back to rights in that area. Even if the aether can’t recognize me, maybe I’m not so ungodly as I imagined.”
We’ve still so much to learn about this curse. So much to navigate and explore. And I know that we’ll do it together.
After a sweet kiss, Neri gives me one of his mischievous looks. “Get dressed. I have a surprise for you this morning.”
I frown. “When did you have time for surprises?”
“My house is magick,” he says. “It’s a home that was made for a god. It still listens to me, and it listened last night while I was trying to go to sleep, which took longer than expected given our rather exhausting activities.”
I narrow my eyes at him playfully, but then I get dressed, more excited than I want to admit.
It’s early. Pre-dawn early. A peek out the window reveals the usual flurries. When I step out of the bedroom, Neri’s standing by the rear door off the kitchen.
“Out there?” I say, pointing toward the door.
He grins and nods. “Out there.”
With a flourish, he opens the door, and I step out onto a flagstone path that cuts through the snow and follow it to the most beautiful walled rose garden I could ever imagine. Roses shouldn’t exist here this time of year. Not for most of the year, actually. And yet there are thousands of blooms, Blood Red Roses, covering thorny bushes and climbing on vines, over the wall and gate and even draped over an arbor. All cradle a little snow in their petals. Candelabras sit atop the surrounding wall, candles burning to fight the morning gloom.
Tears wet my eyes as snow clings to my lashes. I can’t help but cover my mouth with my hands.
“Do you like it?”
I spin around. Neri is right behind me, his gold eyes shimmering with something I’m now realizing is happiness.
“I absolutely love it. Is it for me? Really?”
His crooked grin widens into a broad smile as he draws me close. “Yes. Really. I want you to come here all the time. I’d have you here permanently if I could. But until that day comes, I have this garden to lure you back to me.”
Trying not to sob like an infant, I reach up and touch his face. “You don’t need a garden, wolf. But it doesn’t hurt.”
He laughs at that. “I somehow didn’t think it would.”
We linger for a while, smelling the roses as I tell Neri my mother’s version of Cila and Thaddius’s story.
“It’s like she knew you’d meet me,” he says. “Even though your father said he never told her what he saw for you.”
I pluck a single rose and hold it to my nose. “I know. Even in death, I think she knew I needed that story. And she delivered it to me in a dream.”
“I’m glad you had that connection with her. And that she helped make dealing with me a bit easier for you. Even from the Empyreal Fields.”
I try to smile at the notion. But the truth is that if she’s watching me and Raina like I think my father is, I’m sad for much of what she’s having to see.
When the sun comes up, Neri takes me back to the castle. The day feels no different than every other day of this last month. Everyone is milling about the castle grounds, and in the distance, the village is beginning to bustle with life.
Neri helps me down and stands before me, looming and handsome and fucking irresistible. “I’m going to spend the day in your village,” he says. “If you decide you want to kick everybody out of the castle for the day, I can make that happen and make good on my promise. If not, I can fuck you with everybody there, sneaking you into corners, locking doors to fuck you on tables. It could be fun. Either way, we can cleanse that place. I can do it in a day if you can keep up.”
