I swallow the thoughts and bury them deeply. We just had fun tonight. A little bit of heavy breathing, some neck licking. That’s just fun. It’s what people do all the time to get their rocks off. And he came on me, and called me his, but so what?
We’re just friends.
Just.
Friends.
twenty-two
ExSpellementing
It’s easier than I thought to pretend nothing happened. He doesn’t mention it. I don’t mention it. We eat some delivered butternut squash soup from the Chubby Radish and look over the spells as we forget he just came all over my chest.
“This one specifies a domain,” he says, flipping to the next page. “It would require both of our magics and some of Oscar’s body. Bones would be best but blood—”
I gasp.
“Only a little blood!” he declares.
“We’re not making my poor baby bleed. Fur will be fine.”
Bastian grumbles. “Barely adequate. You obviously don’t love yourpoor babyas much as you could.”
I scoff, picking Oscar up and hugging him close. “I would do anything for this cat.”
“Except prick him with a needle to protect him?”
“The spell doesn’t specify blood or bones!”
“Iknowwhat parts will bind most strongly to the magic. I’m a dragon. Furthermore—”
“Dragon, shamgon! All I’ve ever seen is a lizard.”
Bastian leaves the spell book and stalks to me, the muscles in his shoulders rippling. Papery wings scarred with burns and holes push out from his back and flare wide.
“You’re fortunate to have not seen my full dragon form, lest you quiver into a puddle of fear,” he says, his voice searing into my brain.
But it’s not fear he’s inspiring. Hell, didn’t Ijustcome like four times? How can I possibly be getting turned on by wings and a bit of posturing? It’s ridiculous.
Bastian stops in front of me and his expression shifts from menacing to wicked. “You have no sense of self-preservation, do you?”
I turn away, setting Oscar down as I walk back toward the kitchen. I scoop a spoonful of soup in my mouth and shove a gluten-free cracker in after it to hold off from having to answer, or really just from saying something stupid in response because I don’t trust my mouth when Bastian is shirtless with wings.
He comes to stand behind me, planting his hand on the countertop to cage me in. “If you’d been the maiden they sacrificed to me every year, you would come running into my cave willing and legs open, wouldn’t you have, Kitty?”
“Maiden sacrifices?” I ask around the cracker.
He hums, grabbing a strand of my damp hair between his fingers. “They thought if they gave me their women I wouldn’t consumethe town. Myths from other lands and other monsters I happened to look like.”
“What did you do to them?” I ask, my body trembling with an electric current that might be fear, or maybe jealousy. “The maiden sacrifices?”
“Read to them, mostly,” he says, grabbing another strand of my hair. “Sometimes…other things.”
“Like things that happened in the bathroom?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Fucking…damn it.
He smirks. “Does that make you angry?”
