And he may be trying not to influence me, but I am not so noble.
“You’ve given your home up, over and over,” I tell him. I know my eyes are glowing, because I’m really, really pissed about this. “I want you to keep it. And I want it to beme.”
“You already are, Yora,” Zan whispers. “You don’t need—”
“Zan, I havefive hundred yearsof magical meditation behind me to enable me to process shit extremely goddamn fast,” I snap. “I don’t need more time to be sure that I want this. If you do, that’s—”
“You need to be very careful right now, Yora.”
Something in his voice makes my being still, focusing on him in a different way.
An intonation shift; there’s more growl in it.
Moredragonin it.
I meet his eyes, and they’re beginning to glow.
“There is nothing in the world,” Zan says clearly, “not freedom, or vengeance, or anything else, that I want more than to claim you.”
My heart pounds.
Claimme?
That sounds...
“I am fighting my deepest instincts right now, so that you can choose,” Zan growls. “I amtryingto give you space, and distance, because Iknowthat you have been claimed before. It’sunbelievable, but I know you’re not going to tell me to stop being who I am. But if you tell me to make you mine...
“I’m going to, Yora. And I’m not going to stop.”
Maybe this is something the Order taught me, to want to be possessed. Maybe I should unlearn it.
But I don’t want to.
I love how obsessed with me Zan is.
And the difference, I think, is that I want to possess him, too.
I smile at him, and his eyes sharpen.
He knows me. Heknowsme.
And he knows what kind of smile this is.
A snarl cuts off in his throat as I remove my hands from him, but he lets me do what I want.
Even with his instincts riding him this close, he lets me.
And that is more empowering than he imagines—
But also something I’m going to change.
I drop my hands to my sash—hissash—and untie it.
Zan holds very, very still.
Shoes next, then underwear.
Zan inhales deeply, his fists clenched at his sides, like my scent is even stronger now.
