Page 10 of Blood & Ice

Not fucking likely. I was no one’s ventriloquist dummy. And the fact that he’d called me Charmin? Yeah, that ticked me off even more.

Knox turned to go, then paused, craning his neck so he could meet my eyes. “Oh, and Charmin?”

“It’s Maverick.”

“Names are inconsequential.” He paused. “You might want to hold off on the spell you’re building up to.”

“Why?”

“Because it will blow a hole in your psyche that I can slip through.”

“Why tell me that if that’s exactly what you want?”

He shrugged. “I’m trying to play by the rules. Good luck.”

Then Knox’s foot lashed out, connecting squarely with my knee. I crumpled back into the hole, and the casket beyond. The lid snapped shut inches in front of my face, and wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I hammered the wood.

“Shit,” a distant female voice said. “Damn it, no, Mav! Fight it!”

I hung in limbo, neither here nor there, the shadows clawing at every inch of my exposed skin, awakening my nerves with a ticklish sensation. I found my body at last and felt someone soft and inviting curled in my arms.

Taliyah. Tally had brought me back home. With a kiss. Yes, she’d kissed me.

I love you,I wanted to say. But I couldn’t force the words past my lips.

“Stay with me,” Tally said when my eyes finally focused on her.

Always,I thought back.

Chapter Six

Taliyah

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I lunged at Maverick, mashing our mouths together in an attempt to distract him.

For him to stutter to a stop and pull away, staring at me in doe-eyed shock? The ominous charge of Maverick’s magic didn’t dissipate. If anything, it thickened until I could practically feel it trying to seep into my pores. The air around us boiled with undulating shadows. Voices whispered from just beyond the veil, and a horrible curiosity seized me.What would happen if I fished around in the shadows? Could I pull someone through? Would they be useful enough to end Aurea?

I pulled myself free of the kiss with a gasp. Those hadn’t been my thoughts. They were Maverick’s macabre musings and the desire for vengeance that consumed him. But it hadfeltlike they were my thoughts. His fury still burned the back of my throat, choking off my voice. I tasted copper on my tongue, and that meant Maverick had bitten his tongue or the inside of his cheek.

I pulled back just enough to suck in air. My grip on his face tightened until my nails dimpled the skin of his face. His eyes were still crimson, his body veiled by the shadows that accompanied some of the more violent things he could do with his power. It was still a localized thunderstorm, seeking a target. If he managed to zero in on Aurea Grimsbane, I was going to have a corpse on my hands. Hers or his, I wasn’t sure. If she’d returned to Europe through one of my mirrors, she’d be out of spell-slinging distance. That wouldn’t stop him from trying, though. He’d tear his own soul out of his body to fling it at her if he could, so long as he could be sure it would detonate on impact. If shewasnearby, that left me with a whole other problem to deal with. Neither outcome was acceptable. I had to get Maverick to stop.

But how?

Desperate times call for desperate measures,I thought wildly as the static in the room began to glow red, drenching the room in bloody light.

I let one hand drop away from his face, undoing the buttons of my uniform with shaking fingers. Excitement and nerves warred for control of my thoughts. I knew what I was inviting if I went through with this and part of me was terrified. Terrified that if we crossed a line, we could never come back. Or, I could never come back. I was suddenly terrified he would grow distant and cold when he got what he wanted, like so many other men before him. That if I let him in, literally or figuratively, I’d end up with my heart carved out again when I found him with someone else.

Still, I didn’t stop.

I seized Maverick’s hand and lined it up with the curve of my waist, holding my breath as I waited for his reaction. At first, nothing happened. The power continued to build until I felt like I was being flattened into the wall. Then his fingers twitched, uncurling from the furious claws they’d been fixed in. He tentatively touched the skin of my waist with the tips of his fingers, a cautious exploration that made my heart pound harder than if he’d seized me and hurled me against the wall in a fit of desperate passion.

Jonathan used to do that a lot. Come home, sweep me off my feet, and then take me against the door or on top of the nearest available surface. I didn’t want to draw comparisons between the pair of them, but it was difficult. I hadn’t been the most approachable woman most of the time, and I was kryptonite to the ego of any man who thought they could tame the ‘little lady’. I’d had only a couple serious boyfriends and sexual partners before Jonathan had plucked me up and made me his plaything. Our relationship had been textbook perfect in the beginning,but some part of me always knew it was lacking an infuriatingly vaguesomethingthat mattered. Now I could finally put my finger on what that something was.

Care.

Oh sure, Jonathan would put on a pretense, say all the right words, and even ape exactly the right emotions, but underneath all of that, he was a malignant narcissist with a grudge against me specifically. Maverick liked to pretend he was unfeeling, but it was just a mask, a way to keep himself safe after a lifetime of punches thrown at his face. But the truth was that he gave a shit. And I was fairly sure he gavea lotof shits where I was concerned. Enough to take his time, and treat me like something to be handled gently, even though he knew I wouldn’t break.

“Tally,” he panted, nuzzling my throat after a moment. The feeling of his lips ghosting over my skin raised goosebumps on every inch of me. His voice was so hoarse it barely sounded like his.

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