Chapter
Thirty-Nine
After myself-sacrificial plans,as Sebastian and Sawyer called them, were shot down, I sat in the armchair in my room, skimming a classic novel Sebastian had been trying to get me to read for months.
Plan number one and two didn’t go over well, but plan number three had definitely frightened them the most. I tried to explain that I didn’t want to die, but when I was the common denominator that created all our problems, it seemed like the smartest answer.
The conversation ended with Sawyer storming off angry and Sebastian and I bickering a bit more about the situation before I decided to return to our room.
Actually, the more I thought about it,angrydidn't even fully describe how Sawyer reacted. He reminded me of how he acted when he came to see me after Lucan attacked me—like he was disguising his fear by being a dick.
Sawyer didn’t understand that part of me—the part of my brain that was constantly telling me to give up. Sebastian, did.
“Stupid controlling assholes,” I mumbled to myself.
It was painfully obvious that the Draemornian who had followed Leighton ratted us out when he returned home. And ifI had a guess, there would be more Hykahs here in due time—probably Beaumont, too. At least now we knew how to kill them—and that they even could be killed—and I was thrilled that Kohen’s wholegod theorywas off.
“I heard that,” Sebastian called out from the washroom. He walked out with just a towel tied around his waist, his black hair wet and ruffled.
“Good.” I licked the tip of my finger and used it to flip the page of my book. “Dick,” I mumbled, knowing he’d hear that, too.
Water dripped from his tanned skin when he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at me. I ignored his steady gaze and continued reading.
“How’s the book?”
“Fine.”
He shook his hair out before messing it up some more with his hands. “What chapter are you on?”
“Five.”
“It’s about to get good.”
“Why? Does chapter six have a dirty sex scene in it?”
Sebastian chuckled, the innocence in the sound strumming something inside of me. “No. That's not until chapter eight.”
When he turned his back to me, I skipped to chapter eight, just to see if he was being truthful, and gods…I now understood why people read this stuff.
I slammed the pages closed when my view of his back switched for an up close spectacle of the hard mounds of his chest and abs.
“Bath is still warm. Want to wash some of that Hykah blood off, or are there any other surfaces in our room you want to rub it on first?”
Dipping my eyes to the armchair, I noted the red stains from the blood soaked into my clothes.
Not responding, I laid the book on one of the arms, then ripped my shirt off. Holding the fabric in the air between two fingers, I let go, dropping it onto the floor. “Better?”
“Still upset I see?” Sebastian blinked slowly, then added in my silence. “Fine. If I’m so horrible for not wanting you to hand yourself over to our enemy so you can’t be turned into a mutant or killed, then I can live with that.”
I rolled my eyes, then adjusted my position to cover my bra with my knees.
He started towards his wardrobe. “You know, if anyone should be upset right now, it’s me.”
I glared at him over the book. “Why?”
“Because it absolutely devastates me that you really think we would be better off without you.” He turned towards me, flashing me a brief glimpse of his nudity before stepping into a pair of lounge pants.
That brief glimpse was almost enough to make me slam my book.
