Page 9 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
Ashen shrugs. He’s still not able to meet my eyes. “Like some kind of stalker shrine.”
I laugh, and finally he looks at me. “A stalker shrine? No, Ashen. You’d need more candles and grainy black and white photos and magazine cut-out collages for that.” I give him a fleeting smile before I face the statue once more, my lips parted in awe as I touch the golden mask. “It’s stunning. Magical. Not strange. When did you do this?”
“When I left Sanford,” he says, stopping next to me. I feel him watching as I take in every tiny bubble and spark of color in the glass. “I thought I could stay away. As it turns out, I could barely manage four days.”
I tilt my head, regarding him with an accusatory smile. “But when we first went to Ediye’s, you said you couldn’t travel to the Shadow Realm without me.”
“I lied.” A sheepish smile crosses the Reaper’s face, his gaze drifting away from mine. He shrugs. “The bond magic was uncomfortable the first time we separated, but really I just did not want to part from you.”
A teasing littletskpasses my lips before I let him off the hook and turn my attention back to the statue. “That tattoo did get pretty itchy. I contemplated chewing my arm off.”
Ashen’s hand comes into view and I follow the line of his pointing finger. I look closer at the sculpture’s outstretched arm wielding the sword.Sunu liiktisumais etched on the surface of the glass.
“If it was just that, I could have stayed away,” Ashen says, moving incrementally closer. “It wasn’t as unpleasant as not being able to see your animated expressions, or the irritation in your eyes when I knocked on your door every day, or the way you swept up everyone in that town without ever saying a word. It was magnetic. It was…adorable.”
I snort a laugh and turn to Ashen. My amusement momentarily flees as I catch the heated look in his eyes. I swallow and give him a doubtful glance before flicking my gaze back to the statue.
“Adorable. Are you sure that’s not in the same category as ‘cuddle’?”
Ashen comes closer still. His attention is honed on me as though nothing else exists. I can’t keep my gaze from straying back to him. “I’m sure, vampire. Your irritation was definitely adorable, particularly when it boiled over and you threw it back at me, burrowing under my skin. In all my immortal life, I’ve never been as simultaneously enraged and enthralled by anyone.”
“Someone had to put you in your place, you know,” I say, raising my chin to give him a haughty look. “You strode around the Swan like the hottest piece of ass to ever walk through its doors.”
A devious smile lifts one corner of Ashen’s lips. “Your colleague Anna certainly thought so.”
I gasp. Actuallygasp. Jesus. What a fucking amateur move of me. I smack his shoulder and bite down on my lip to punish myself for the flame of rage that eats through my flesh and colors my skin with blush. Ashen’s smile broadens and he laughs. He feels that burst of jealousy through our mark.Motherfucker.
“You’re such a dick, you know that, right?”
Ashen’s arm snakes across my back. His other hand sweeps my hair over my shoulder so he can nestle a kiss to my throat. “You know I was only trying to see if you felt anything at all for me aside from mistrust and the urge to bathe in my blood. When you stalked off to find that groundskeeper for a card game, I figured there might be more for me than just malice there.”
My hands slide up Ashen’s arms even though I try to hang onto my irritation. He presses one lingering kiss after another to my pulse as he guides us further down the path, one step at a time.
“You’re mistaken,” I say, a blatant lie. “I only wanted to bathe in your blood. And maybe kill you with a toilet brush.”
Even despite my words, I still hop up to wrap my legs around Ashen’s back and my arms around his neck. I tilt my head to the side to luxuriate in his hot kisses. I rake my fingernails through his dark hair and he moans into my skin.
“What about now?” he whispers between nips and licks and kisses my neck.
“Huh?”
Ashen’s smile warms my jaw. “Killing me. Bathing in my blood.”
“Oh...yeah. That’s…” I trail off, my words breathless as Ashen’s hand sweeps the silk robe open across my thigh, his rough palm scouring up my leg until he grips my ass, holding me closer. His erection presses through the seam of his pants and sets my core aching with need. “Killing. That’s umm… It’s…something.”
“Vampire,” Ashen whispers. He takes my earlobe between his teeth and I shiver. “You seem to be distracted.”
“It’s been a day.”
“It has. And it’s not over yet,” Ashen says with a wicked edge to his voice. It cuts through the swell of the pulse humming in my ears. “It’s far from over, in fact.”
“You sound like a man with a plan.”
“Maybe.”
“A demon with semen.”
“Dear Christ.”
