Jolted to his senses, Ray met Timur’s eyes for the first time since we got there. He blinked, focusing on his blue eye, then on the red one. Confusion mixed with alarm on his face, making him look almost lucid for the first time during our visit. He raised his hands in front of his face, cowering behind them.
“What the fuck are you? What kind of a b-beast?” he mumbled.
Did he really just call Timur a beast? When he was the one using people as sex toys?
“A beast? Sure. And I’ll tear your head off your shoulders if I don’t get what I want,” Timur replied, visibly calm.
I knew him well enough, however, to catch the strained note in his voice. Timur was furious. In fact, he was holding back with all the restraint he possessed. And Ray should be terrified of that restraint snapping potentially.
Timur placed the long, white fingers of his right hand over Ray’s head. His claws pressed into the skin of Ray’s skull, leaving indentations but not drawing blood yet.
“My business is brief,” Timur said. “Tell your men you’re giving me a cave, and I’ll leave you alone. Deny me again, and I’ll crush your fucking head.”
His bone fingers flexed. The claws pierced Ray’s skin. Thin rivulets of dark blood trickled down his face. The shock of pain yanked his mind out of the stupor.
He squirmed, grabbed Timur’s fingers in an attempt to pry them off his head. When that didn’t work, he gripped Timur’s tail, but the spikes on the vertebra hurt his fingers, forcing him to jerk his hands away with a scowl.
Finally, he opened his mouth to scream for help, but Timur gave him a firm shake.
“I swear you’ll lose your head the moment anyone enters here. I’ll fly away, unharmed.” He opened his wings wider to support his point. “And you’ll lose the gold.”
“W-what g-gold?” Ray blubbered, barely coherent.
The pain that had given him some mental clarity initially seemed to be jumbling his thoughts now.
“The gold I’d be paying you if you had any business sense left to rent me one of the many caves that are currently sitting unoccupied.”
Ray squinted, trying to blink the blood out of his eyes.
“You want a cave?”
“Yes, I do. And I won’t leave here until you tell your goons to give me one.”
“A-a cave? Which one?”
Timur heaved an exasperated sigh.
“How about one like this? Spacious, high from the beach, with its own water source, and a patio. Right, Elaine?” He kissedmy temple, drawing me closer in a hug with his left arm. “Would you like to watch the sunrise on our own patio, my sweet?”
It sounded fantastic, but I couldn’t focus on choosing the features of a cave when a man’s skull was being crushed right in front of my eyes.
I wanted to bury my face in Timur’s shoulder, refusing to see this. Then I remembered how Ray tried to force-feed me the hyacinth flower. He would’ve succeeded, too, even if I fought him. The only reason he stopped was because Timur placed his outrageous bid at that very moment, distracting everyone.
Timur protected me before we’d even exchanged a single word with each other. If he wished to kill the asshole who once tried to strip me of my free will, I wasn’t going to stop him.
I turned to Timur with a smile.
“Yes, darling,” I said firmly. “I’d love to have a patio, a lot of space, and a comfy bed big enough for both me and you.”
“Did you hear that, Ray?” Timur turned Ray’s head to look at me, then back to him again. “Now call Zayr in and tell him what she wants. Because one way or another, I’ll give my woman whatever she asks for, and I don’t need you alive for that.”
Ray opened his mouth to yell for his men, but Timur brought his face closer to him, trapping his eyes with his gaze.
“I’ll deal with Zayr only, do you hear me? Call in anyone else, and you are both dead. Do you understand?”
Ray tried to nod, but with his head trapped in Timur’s claws, it didn’t really work.
“I do. Let me g-go. I…I d-do…” he mumbled.
