Page 11 of Wings of Ashes
“You just said there was something wrong with my face. Why should I want to ‘please’ you?”
Bael frowned. “Isn’t that your whole goal? To win us? To trap us to you by graduation?”
“I have zero interest in being tied to an alpha at graduation,” she spouted off the most unlikely sentence to come from a cygnus shifter’s mouth.
Bael rolled his eyes. “Well, now you’re just lying.”
“You really think every woman here would fall to her knees and beg to serve you, huh?” Nix questioned. Her hair twisted in a soft breeze of wind, fluttering around her face. “Beg to be chosen by you?”
Bael’s tongue dabbed his lip piercing. “I didn’t say that.” A strange, warm buzzing sensation swept over his skin.
“You think your strength and your power make you justsoattractive to me that I would want to attend this academy and learn about nothing else but how to make you feelgood?”
There was something about the way she said, “feel good,” and something about her low, sarcastic tone that made the buzzing grow stronger over Bael’s skin.
He scratched at his arm, wondering if he had accidentally touched some kind of poisonous plant in the woods while searching for the potion ingredients. Why did he feel so…warm? Bael never even felt shaken, yet now he feltstirred.
“You know what really pisses me off about alphas like you?” Nix asked sassily. The wind kept playing with Nix’s hair as she glared at him. It was distracting. “You call us flock chasers and nest sluts because we try to get you to choose us as a mate, yet you all do nothing to make the world safer for us so that we wouldn’thave tochase you.”
Bael’s frown deepened, and he rubbed a palm over his chest as it…thrummed. His breathing stalled when he realized what the unfamiliar sensations were and what they meant.
A thick swallow bobbed down his throat as he tilted his head and watched her more closely. His eyes narrowed on her.
“Are you even listening to me right now?” Her bottom lip pursed as she scowled. Bael wanted to suck it and…
Oh, Hell no. “Stop the fucking enchanting already,” Bael viciously snapped at her. She was lucky he didn’t snap her neck for trying to bespell him.
She blinked, and complete astonishment washed over her features, feigning innocence.Oh please. She knew what she was doing.
“I’m not enchanting you,” she said.
Using supernatural speed, Bael stalked up to her until they stood face to face.
She gasped at his predatory movement, not able to move that fast herself. Her sudden inhale of his powerful, sensual scent caused her pupils to dilate, and Bael cursed his ever-present alpha pheromones.
“I know what you swans can do.” He growled, “Stop the fucking enchantment. Now.”
“I’m not—”
“The fuck you’re not,” he shot back.
Grabbing her hand, he cupped her palm over the growing bulge between his legs. Her glare and voice and scent had started making him hard.Him. Over his pants zipper, she was sure to feel the hot, lengthy erection beneath.
“You think I just get hard for anyone?” he rasped. “Hell, Blondie, I haven’t gotten hard in fucking years.”
“Y-Years?” she asked in a squeaky voice. She shook herself, seeming to feign confidence as she replied, “Sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”
“You think I am someone you can enchant to marry? Huh? You want to lure me into your little honeypot, siren-water-magic trap? You want me to be your husband at graduation?”
“You didn’t listen to a single word I said a few minutes ago, did you?” Nix huffed. “I don’twanta husband.”
“Then, stop mind fucking me.”
“I’mnot.” She bit her lip. In another turn of events, her thumb stroked out. Once. Back and forth. Right over his growing erection. “Gods, you’re hard.”
“Fuck,” Bael grated between his teeth. “I’m not husband material. I don’tmarry. I fuck.”
She inhaled sharply again.
