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Bane plucked it from my fingers as I raised it to my lips. “That’s your friend’s.”
“Fated bestie,” Mo added.
I frowned. “Don’t you mean yours?”
He deftly swapped our drinks and made his way back to me, turning the coffee with deliberate slowness until I spotted a note tucked into the heat cozy. Bane chuckled. “Nope.”
“How did you know to get her one?” I questioned, suspicion lacing my tone.
His arresting blue eyes hooded as he sauntered over to me and gripped my chin. “I stalk you, remember?”
I squeezed my thighs together beneath my dress. Mo was right, that accent. Or was it his words? Some part of me loved the idea of him watching me when I didn’t know he was there.
My belly somersaulted, heat pooling at the apex of my thighs.
Bane inhaled, his wings flaring, and grinned, flashing his sharp canines. Thank fuck for the glamor, too bad it didn’t erase the arousal I knew he could scent. He bent at the waist, horns tickling my hair as he whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry about earlier. It’s all in the note. Huff helped me make a rudimentary key to their runes so you can read it.”
Turning my face, our lips now less than an inch apart, I smirked, then bit his lip deeply. “I’m not upset. Freddy and Marv were very entertaining.”
I narrowly contained the whimper of need curling at the back of my throat as he adjusted the growing bulge that nudged against my shoulder and stood to his full height. “Well, then. I’ll leave you two to your visit. See you later, Honeybee.”
CHAPTER 23
Girl’s Weekend
BANE
“That’s it. I’ve achieved my life’s goal.”
“And what’s that?” Aurey, one of my Heechu family members asked, her little voice somehow even more precious than my best friend’s as she climbed down my biceps and sat on the forearm resting on my lap.
“I almost feel like a real grotesque.”
The Heechu rolled her eye at me as if she was already over my shit. Undeterred, I continued, “Humans have countless tales about grotesques, and yes, I refuse to use the name said humans have adopted using for my kind. No motherfucking waterspouts,” I reminded Aurey, pointing a claw to my mouth like she took part in the original conversation of gargoyles versus grotesques. “But almost all of them are about these grand, mythical stone beings perching on rooftops to guard whatever building it is,” I threw up my hands, slashing through the lazily falling water drops, “completely bleedin’ inanimate. Do you believe that? I’d wager it was a simple as some person pulling it out of their arsehole and started bleating about it like the latest gossip.”
“How does all of that,” she made a flippant gesture with one of her lilac tails and narrowed her eyes at me, “make you feel like a real grotesque? Huff is right, you go off on side tangents constantly.”
I chuckled, shooting her a grin. “You aren’t wrong. What I’m trying to say is, here I sit on the library’s rooftop, guarding over Miko just like in their stories, and waiting for her and that friend of hers to fall asleep.”
“Dono, sounds more like stalking to me, Baney.”
“Guarding, stalking. They’re essentially the same thing depending on your point of view,” I clarified, holding up my hands, palms faced upward while raising and lowering them to emphasize my point. “Where is Huff anyhow? He was supposed to meet me up here hours ago.”
“He’s assisting Gus with another potion experiment.”
I snickered. “Ah, wise of you to be here then, even if the weather isn’t agreeable to some.”
Aurey giggled. “It could be worse. If the sky was clear and it wasn’t so windy, you could be getting covered in bird droppings instead of rain.”
As if that was all she had to say on the matter, she winked into nothing. I’d never been fond of idle time. It left me with too much time to think, and spending too much time wandering around inside my skull wasn’t good for anyone’s health.
Alas, this is how I’d found myself after over thirty-two hours without Miko. I forgot how much it fucking aches watching her while not being able to touch. That small taste I sampled has absolutely ruined me. It’s as if it fed something inside me, and now it will only be satisfied if I consumed her entirely.
Hmm. Would the ache lessen if I carved a hole in my chest, tucked my Miko inside, and stitched myself back up?
Groaning, I caught her scent on the petrichor-tinged breeze as leaves twisted, showing their pale underbellies and whispering of the storm on the horizon.
Fuck me. My fangs throbbed with want. No, that wasn’t quite right, that torturous bond screamed with need, urging me to claim her already. Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine the scene. To bite into her flesh and taste her essence as it slipped over my tongue. I know it will taste just as good as her arousal.
