Page 42 of Bound and Tide

One of her brows shot up.

“That is, I…” His eyes flicked down to her palming the vial, and he cleared his throat. “I don’t think about it.” It was a lie—he always thought about it—but to cover the untruth, he snatched the cord out of her hand.

She eyed him but then settled herself in his lap, and everything else was forgotten. Her hands were in the neck of his undone tunic again, and she was running fingers over the healed skin where she’d carved into him on the shore. “You took that so well today.”

Xander swallowed against the grin that wanted to break out on his face, holding back, Of course I did, I’m amazing, and a great number of other self-serving platitudes.

“I think such a good boy deserves a little reward,” she purred, and he could no longer keep from beaming at her. “What would you like?”

Anything I want, he thought viciously. “Anything I want?” he asked innocently.

She shrugged, grin playful, fingers teasing.

He was immediately overwrought with the foulest, most debaucherous requests, but then he just sighed. “I want what anyone wants—to be utterly showered in adoration.”

“That’s not terribly specific.” Her hand roved up to his neck.

“Get creative.”

She clicked her tongue, fingers twisting into his hair left loose since they’d returned. “I want to give you exactly what you want, what you deserve, so tell me, and be honest.”

Xander’s mouth went dry and his guts clenched. He knew exactly what he deserved because it had been mercilessly ingrained into him early and frequently, but his demands were disparate: he should be treated like a worthy blood mage, be served, be tended to, have his desires foreseen. He didn’t care if his demands were answered begrudgingly. In fact he preferred resistance because he knew it was all just a game of who had the most power.

Yet with Red, everything he thought he knew became strange and unfamiliar. What he should demand, the things that didn’t align with what his existence truly warranted, fell away, leaving him with a much simpler request. A request that made heat prickle at the back of his neck, skin warming on his chest and up along his jaw. A request he couldn’t possibly ask even though she had demanded his honesty.

“Xander,” she said, and he was thrown at hearing his name filled with such affection, “are you all right? You’re going quite red.” She trailed her thumb over his cheek, and the blood rushed to the surface all the more intensely when she called attention to it.

“Bloody fucking Abyss,” he grumbled, rubbing his face and trying to pull back, but she caught him and held him still. Xander dragged in a long breath. No escape, he thought, and not because he’d been enchanted or even bound up, so he may as well say. “It would be nice if…” he began, feeling lightheaded, eyes drifting down to the space between them.

There, the vial lay against his chest, and he heard the word once more, deserve, said with such vitriol he felt a terrible panic begin to rise. Instead of letting that panic crash over him, he whipped the cord off over his head. As he placed the vial on the bedside table, he might have heard a distant scream, but he cleared his throat over the sound.

“It would be nice,” he tried again, “if you would…perhaps…tell me, in all earnestness, if my presence is, uh”—he coughed—“tolerable.”

“Tolerable?” She scrunched up her face. “You’re sitting on my bed, so I would think it obvious that—”

“No, that’s not…” Xander stared down into his lap. “Never mind. I’d rather you just suck my—”

“Ah, no.” She tipped his face back up. “Not that.”

“You said you’d give me whatever I want!”

Red pinched his chin. “But that’s not what you want.”

“I assure you that is a baseline desire of most men, at all times, regardless.”

She huffed. “Tell me the truth.”

“Fine.” He swallowed. “I would just like to hear that you…well, that you are fond of me, all right? But only if it’s true.”

“You want me to say I’m fond of you?”

Dark gods, the admittance was worse than all those deviant thoughts he’d had—this was genuinely abhorrent. “Don’t make me say it again,” he groaned behind gritted teeth.

“Oh, but I am so very fond of my good boy.” Red’s grin spread as sincerity fell over her features, and something began to happen inside Xander—something awful and wonderful both. “I’m fond of your body, surely, and I’m very fond of your tongue.” Her hands found his waist and slid up under his tunic, and every inch of skin she touched vibrated with something so like arcana yet, if it were possible, stronger. “But I’m fond of the way your eyes sparkle too, like the stars in the Everdarque, and how soft you keep your hair, and how much you fuss over your clothes.”

Xander’s breath was stolen, but it didn’t matter, he had nothing to say, pithy or otherwise. His pulse pounded under her hands like it wanted to be embraced. His flesh begged to be dug into, and his blood longed to drench her fingers as they wrapped around his heart and held it.

“And, you know, even though you drive me mad, I’m fond of how particular you are, how insolent you pretend to be, that grin you always give me that you think is so suave—I’m fond of all of it, Xander.” She straddled him as her lips brushed against his cheek with a kiss that promised something he didn’t have the words or experience to understand. But he wanted to, dark gods, and he would do whatever it took to figure it out. “But your presence, when you’re just here with me”—she touched her nose to his—“that might be the thing I’m fondest of all.”

---