Page 121 of Of Blood and Banes
Darian eyes me with his arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t take it you decided to hold up your end of the bargain and have a flask hiding somewhere underneath that blouse of yours, do you?”
“I’m not really in the mood,” I retort. But really, what I don’t want to admit to is the fact that if I fight him, if I get close enough to touch him…I’ll be tempted into a repeat of what happened last night. Or into something further. Every time I think of how he touched me, how he drew out every moan and shake of my legs, I blush. When Sethan asked me a question, Daeja had to whip her tail into my boot to warn me I was zoning out—replaying the moments of last night for asecondtime today. It’s enough to convince me I’m letting things get out of hand.
Darian smirks. “In a life-or-death situation, nobody is going to give a shit if you’re in the mood.”
I snap my attention to him. “Do you have to be such an asshole all the time?”
“I’m not a coddler.” He pushes off the wall. “Come take it out on me.”
Oh, no.I know what that means. Because it’s isexactlyhow things started off last time. I walk over to the bed and pull back the sheets. “No.”
“You’re still upset even though your pathetic friend wasn’t the one who died?”
I snap my gaze up to him at his disrespectful mention of Archie as I ball the sheets in my fists. He knows exactly what to say to tempt the fantasy of me gutting him. Testing, poking, prodding every angle of my self-composure. And I’m about tobreak it just to teachhima lesson to shut his godsdamned mouth.
He smiles, finding my weak spot. “He should have, though.”
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” I say through gritted teeth and rip my eyes off him before I do something stupid.
“Why? Because you know it’s true?”
I blink, and somehow I’ve cleared the space between us. Rearing my left arm back, he opens his hands and stretches back, exposing his chest. “Come on. Hit me. Show me what you can do with that left hand.”
I swing, and he catches my arm as if I’m nothing but a toddler on the offense.
He taunts, “Is that all you have?”
Throwing my next punch with a grunt, he boils my blood with a mocking laugh. I erupt into a typhoon of swings, punches, and kicks. Anything that will land me a blow. But each of my movements is halted.
“Hit me,” he grunts with each missed strike. “Hit me!”
I fake him to the right and slap him on the cheek with the left. As soon as I make contact, the collision stings my hand. A horror spikes in me, and I shrink back as soon as I’ve hit him. He swivels to me with a red-hot handprint outlined on his face.
His eyes burn, his lips pulled up to reveal his teeth. “Good. But slapping a foe isn’t going to do much other than piss them off.”
He jerks his chin toward the opposite wall. All of hell’s wrath simmering behind his eyes, and he visibly struggles to maintain composure, spitting out each word through gritted teeth. “Grab your fucking sword. Before I change my mind.”
Without turning my back to him, I retrieve it from the wall and walk back to him.
He taps underneath my elbow. “You’re getting lazy. Keep it raised.”
“It’s heavy,” I admit, stuck in his gaze and watching the fury recede.
“Would you prefer a knitting needle, my lady?”
I narrow my eyes. “Need I remind you who’s holding the sword here?”
He laughs, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance. “A toddler with a sword would scare me more.”
“I could kill you if I wanted to.”
“You don’t scare me, kitten. Try me.”
As soon as I swing, he swats the sword out of my grasp, and it sails off a few feet before landing on the ground. He tilts his head in a gesture that says,see?
Good Gods, am I relieved we’re doing this in the privacy of my room. I’m not sure I could stomach embarrassing myself in front of an entire crowd entrusting me to save the realm.
I throw a punch, and he deflects. A second punch, and he grabs my arm and twists me into submission as he always does. He laughs, my ears ringing from the sound. I glare back at him and slam the heel of my foot down on his boot.
