My head snapped back as he fisted my hair, angling my throat before he attacked it. He unleashed all his frustration on me with scalding hot sucking and biting. My groan was broken and loud. My dick was so hard, I was positive there wasn’t any blood left in my brain. The dizzy spell only heightened Timothy’s effect on me.
“Fuck,” I rasped, bucking my hips, needing more.
Then there was nothing but cold air around me as my ass hit the wall. The contact broke so abruptly my body stayed pitched forward, reaching, while my mind struggled to catch up to the empty space he left behind. Despite no longer needing to breathe, I found myself panting.
Timothy ran a frustrated hand through his hair, cheeks flushed, mouth wet and eyes dark. “No,” he barked. I couldn’t tell if he was yelling it at me or himself.
Without meeting my eye, he went on. “This cannot happen. The return of Sekhors to the new world is still too new, too tenuous. If I were to rip into another god’s blood-bond, it could lead to a brutal war of gods claiming vampires for their own. I would be seen as volatile and weak, and I’d constantly have to defend my position.”
I surged to my feet. “This isn't about anyone else, and you know it.” Anger seethed from my words. “This is about you, me, and Seth.”
It was almost imperceptible but I caught his flinch at my master’s name.
His posture softened. “Maybe if...maybe in a couple hundred years...when the political climate has calmed?—”
“Or when Grim is back and gives you permission?” I didn’t hide the disgust in my voice.
Timothy’s gaze flashed at me.
I rolled my eyes. “You think I’m the only one bound? You are so bound to Grim, to this position, to the rules, you are more trapped than I am. The truth is, Timothy…” I stepped closer until our shoulders brushed. “The truth is,” I said quieter now, my eyes fixed on some distant point beyond him. My fingers twitched at my sides, fighting the urge to touch him even as I prepared to twist the knife. “You may be a god, but you treat yourself like a mortal. You’ve chosen fear over power every single time.”
Before he could respond, I clipped his shoulder as I passed by him, walking out the door without looking back. Because I didn’t want to see the pained look on his face.
Even without looking, I could hear it in the uptick of his heart, of the slight but sharp inhale. I could feel the air rippling around his muscles as they coiled in response to my dig.
The truth hurt, but he needed to hear it. Just like I needed to somehow cut my heart out of his chest and take it back as my own.
8
TIMOTHY
Standing before the mirror, I adjusted the collar of my tailored suit. It shimmered, a star map of constellations embedded directly into the fabric, shifting subtly as I moved. A faint blue glow pulsed at my back, a sigil of my recordkeeping and cosmic order, and unmistakably divine. It was a perfect nod to the celestial theme of the night.
Tonight was the Convergence. Expectation pressed down on me like the ancient stones of the pyramids themselves, looming and heavy. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that tonight was about order, about power.
It was not about snogging with a vampire who had driven me to distraction.
I ran my fingers through my hair, tweaking small pieces, making sure they looked just right. Perhaps it would distract from the deep circles that hung beneath my eyes.
Sleep had eluded me for the last week and a half. It had since I cracked under Aaron’s mouth, and my focus had been fracturing like glass underfoot ever since.
Every time I got near the man, I found myself battling a storm of impulses, selfish desires, and a reckless urge to seize what I couldn’t allow myself to have.
My eyes fluttered shut as it rushed back to me in high-def, technicolor. The turquoise of his eyes receding into thin bands around the expanding dark pools of his hungry pupils as he kissed me. The heady scent of him saturating my entire body with a mixture of the ocean, something clean, and deeply sensual.
And his taste...oh gods, his taste. The salty, masculine play of his tongue drove sense from me in tandem with the rough scratch of the scruff on his face. All my blood had evacuated to my cock with painful insistence while my heart had lodged its way up into my throat, beating only for him. Aaron.
A shiver rolled through my body.
“You cold?” A voice pulled me from my trance. I opened my eyes to find Miranda standing at the door.
Her gown was deep indigo, sleek and lethal in its simplicity, the fabric flowing like liquid night. The bejeweled headdress and jewelry glinted with more than glitz. They were captured stars, encased in little jeweled fittings.
I picked it all out for her personally. The gods wouldn’t like having a human present, but at least she’d somewhat blend in.
Slits in the skirt showed off her muscular legs, though they were more for function, in case she needed to, as she put it, “kick some ass.” To prove the point that she was willing and ready to do so, Bob sat at her hip in an equally ornate scabbard.
“Bob says thank you for the new sheath,” Miranda said, catching where my gaze went. “He says, ‘Je me sens ravissante.’”I feel ravishing.
