“Anyway, you chose Kols with your earth magic. You even chose Shade by biting him. Yet I essentially forced myself on you. Yeah, it was for the right reasons in the end, but that doesn’t change the circumstances for biting you.”
Okay. I was done rambling now. It left me feeling vulnerable and weak, two adjectives that were very much not me. And I sort of hated that Aflora drew that side out of me.
Avoiding relationships had worked well for me.
Maybe I’d go back to that.
Leave Kols and Shade to handle Aflora, protect them all from afar, and just?—
“Zeph,” Aflora said, her hand curling around my wrist to tug my hand away from my face. “Look at me.”
I was tempted to glare at her in response but chose not to make this worse and gave her my attention instead. She studied my expression, her lips curling at whatever she saw there. Probably a scowl because this was fucking uncomfortable.
“I think that’s the most emotion you’ve ever displayed in my presence.” She sounded amused, which only made me want to glower again. But she distracted me with her tits as she sat up, her sweater stretching deliciously across her chest.
Removing her cloak had been a fantastic idea.
Actually, no. I should have just taken everything off.
“You made me mouseberries?” she asked, gaping at the plates on the nightstand.
“Don’t get too excited,” I cautioned her. “Pretty sure they’re just mustard berries or something.”
She snorted. “You know what they’re called.”
“Do I?” I asked innocently. “Huh. Well, I guess you’ll have to taste them and find out if I did it right.” I knew I had, as they were pretty much the same thing as sour green grapes, but I enjoyed teasing her anyway.
She flashed me an amused smile that made my heart race. Aflora was a gorgeous woman, but when she smiled at me like that, I forgot how to think.
Because I’d made her happy.
A rarity, it seemed. But for a brief moment, I’d pleased her, and that made me want to puff up in pride.
Kols would laugh hysterically at the sight. Fortunately, he wasn’t here to witness it.
Aflora took the plate, settled it into her lap, and propped her back up against the headboard. “All right, Headmaster. Let’s see if your chef skills measure up, shall we?” She waggled her brows at me playfully, then lifted the loaf to her mouth and took a sensual bite.
Well, it was sensual to me, anyway. Hell, everything she did with her lips and tongue seemed to hypnotize me.
And that moan she released after tasting the food I’d prepared?
Yeah, that was hot, too.
I adjusted myself on the bed, my jeans suddenly a little too tight, and busied myself by eating the loaf off the other plate. It was okay. Sort of like having a sour fruit salad in a soggy tortilla. Not my favorite, but I knew better than to voice an opinion out loud on the topic.
“So where are we?” she finally asked, glancing out the window again.
“New York City,” I told her.
“In the Human Realm?”
While she voiced it as a rhetorical question, I responded with a nod. “Yeah. We’re lying low until we know what the Council meeting was about. And, well, also until we know if anyone noticed what happened in the village.” Because that could go bad quickly if anyone witnessed that explosion of power.
She visibly shivered but indulged in another bite.
A comfortable silence fell between us while we finished our meal, her gaze far away with thoughts I couldn’t hear. We needed to discuss what happened, but I wouldn’t push her.
Instead, I considered an alternative that might provide us both with a necessary reprieve from all the chaos surrounding our lives.
