Page 68 of Devoured

“So—”

“It’s just that her thoughts are kind of shouting at me, even when I’m not focusing on them, and she doesn’t get why you’re so mad at her.” Arielle glances between us. “You two should really talk. If you knew how much Calix thinks about you, then—”

“Okay, that’s it.” Calix slips a hand under my thighs and lifts me in his arms, ignoring my cry of protest. “We’re leaving. Sin, be nice to Arielle. Arielle, stop announcing what people are thinking. It’s rude.”

“Of course.” Sin bows with a smirk before winking at me. He doesn’t seem fazed at all by my being in his cousin’s arms—except for the hard glint in his gaze and the way he doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Be nice to my future mate, Calix.”

Calix snarls in response and stomps out of the room, slamming the door shut behind us. His scarlet gaze burns through the corridor, through the ceiling, through the floor. Through everything but me.

“Where are we going?” he demands.

“I don’t know.” I try my best to elbow him, but he’s holding me too close. I manage a weak jab to his forearm. “And I’d rather not meander through the halls without any real clothes on.”

Calix stops. He glances down at my body.

Suddenly realizing that I’m not wearing more than a soiled gown, sheared at my thighs and chest, he swears and heads for the nearest curtained window. Without hesitation, he manages to, rather ungracefully, tear an ebony curtain from its rod and wraps it around me. “There,” he says, continuing our stroll to nowhere.

I glower at him. So much for my quiet moments with Sin. Annoyance flares up my throat. “Now it looks like we were sleeping together.”

He clenches his jaw. “Where am I taking you?”

“To the nearest cliff. You can set me down before you jump off it.”

“I’m not going to fight with you in public.”

“We’re already fighting.”

He narrows his eyes on mine. His gaze darkens, flashes, reminding me that he’s as scary as any other predator here. No—scarier. “This isn’t fighting, Vanessa. Not yet.”

I swallow roughly, heat licking at my ribs from his touch. “You’re kidnapping me, Calix.”

“Fine.” He kicks down the nearest door without bothering to check if its room is vacant first. Luckily, it is. Unluckily, that means I’m alone with Calix. Again.

He shuts the door behind us and stares down at me, frowning, his breath cool against my cheek. “You want to fight? Go ahead. Let me have it. Tell me all the reasons you’re mad at me when I’m the one who just found you injured in my traitorous cousin’s bed.”

I want to look away, crawl away, but I’m stuck here. So I gesture to the empty bed and its wrinkled sheets. “Put me down, Calix.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t walk. Because I should’ve known you were being tortured. Because I can’t trust that this room doesn’t belong to a murderer who will do worse to you!” He exhales hard. “Just… tell me where you want to go. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

I hear the words he doesn’t say aloud as if he’s screamed them at me: “I’ll take you wherever you want to go so long as it’s not back to my cousin.”

“You’re impossible,” I say.

“Likewise,” Calix growls.

My fangs ache as I try to repress them. As I try to repress the quiver of wrath deep in my stomach too. But Calix makes everything so much more difficult. I can’t hold myself together around him, and I’m helpless in his arms.

His hands span the width of my ribs, my thighs, and he holds me as if he doesn’t hate me at all. Even as he glares at me with unabashed loathing. Even as his chest rises and falls as though he’s ready to spar. God, I wish I could. “Did you tell someone?” I ask impulsively. “About what you think I did to those werewolves?”

His gaze sharpens on mine. “Don’t be stupid.”

“She knew, Calix.”

“Of course she did. I told you that you’re playing games you don’t understand.”