I’m going to masturbate to this for years,I think as I sit in his kitchen, alone in the dark. I woke up thirsty as fuck and in a fair amount of discomfort. Taranis—or Darius?—had the foresight to grab my clutch. I found it in the melee of tattered clothing scattered around his bed upstairs, and go through it now, finding an ibuprofen packet I’ve had in there for months and taking it gratefully. I wash it down with ice-cold water and go through the images I took on my phone as a way to keep me awake and from thinking about things too critically.
I may be a dead girl walking, but I’m also ... confused. Trying to decide if I should slink back to my own apartment four floors down—ass naked—or ... or what? Taranis told me this was only for one night, and he’s sleeping like the dead, face down on his king bed that, beneath his new size, now looks like a twin. Is the night over? I mean, it has to be. I can’t give any more. I ache down to the bone in the best of fucking ways.
He also said it was forever. I shiver and look down at my phone screen, where my thumb’s been hovering over a button I’ve been reluctant to push this whole time. Pushing that last ludicrous thought aside, I press play.
The video starts with Taranis electrocuting Cynthia and ends once we hit the bathroom, right before I pulled his tail out of his pants. I didn’t take any pictures, not one single photograph. That doesn’t mean the internet isn’t flooded with other pictures of Taranis as the monster upstairs.
I know I need to send his PR team something. New contacts forwarded to me by Simone have been blowing up my phone all night wondering what the fuck happened since Taranis isn’t answering his. I’m surprised they haven’t sent anyone to bang on his apartment door yet—though, given what happened to the last SDD troops who got too close to him, I don’t blame anyone for not signing up for that mission.
I can’t send them the whole video. I can’t show them Taranis literally torturing a human woman, so I crop out that bit. What’s left, though? Well, that makes me cringe, my toes curling into the footrest of the hardwooden barstool beneath me. I take another sip of water and wonder if my pride can handle it. Because the clipwithoutthe torture bit makes it fully look like hedidrevert for Cynthia, especially when she screams those exact words. There’s nothing else to suggest why he reverted in the video. I can’t even hazard a guess, and I was there. Cynthia theoretically should have a better guess than I do, but she’s an idiot and vain.
Another email from Taranis’s PR team pops up on my screen. Well, shit. I open it up and see that Mr. Singkham has been cc’d and has even responded, begging for any update I might have, even though it’s two o’ clock in the morning.
I shiver. It’s cold in here. I should go.I should stay. But stay to fuck him or stay to do some spying?
I glance around his apartment. It’s so cold, and there isn’t much in it. No obvious neon signs that sayLook Here for Weapons. If I were going to spy, now would be the time to do it. But spy on Darius? After what went down between us?Augh.No. I can’t think like that. I can’t think with those kinds of feelings. The night is over. I have no expectation I’ll ever see Darius again. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to my dealings with Taranis.Ssi-bal.
Fuck it. I hit send at the exact same time I decide to get up and do a little snooping—one second before a voice crashes over my head like a brick.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I drop my phone, and it clatters noisily over the black granite countertop. I turn around on my stool, phone immediately forgotten as I see him standing at the top of his staircase, leaning against a banister made out of metal and glass, which means I can see everything through it. Everything.
Andgawd. The monster dong hanging between his legs makes my mouth water even as warning sirens go off in my head:Mayday Mayday Mayday. Even soft, it’s not an appendage to scoff at. It’s an organ to gasp at. And it’s not soft right now. It hardens the longerI stare at it. I wonder—not for the first time tonight—how that thing ever fit inside me and how I can make it fit inside me again. I whimper.
Taranis’s eyebrows pull together, and if I weren’t so distracted by the anaconda between his legs, I might have taken more time to appreciate how everything about him has changed, including the shape and structure of his once-beautiful face—everything except for his hair. He still has the tight fade he started the night with. The thick, well-groomed eyebrows. The eyelashes curling above eyes that continue to glare at me now.
“You gonna answer me, or do I have to come down there?” The threat makes my knees clench.
In a whisper that sounds like some fair damsel and not like my usual deep smoker’s pitch, I say, “I was thirsty.”I wasn’t about to spy on you. Not one bit.
I watch his whole body relax, softening. His forehead unfurrows, his shoulders roll back; he relaxes his stance and his grip on the railing in front of him, letting one hand drop down to his cock. Fuck me. “You shoulda told me, baby,” he says in a tone I’ve never heard him use. He sounds ... nice. And not nice like Taranis the public-facing Champion nice, butnicenice. Just nice. “I didn’t want you leaving my bed.”
Just for tonight. Just for tonight. I’m a spy. I’m a spy. 007 and all that shit.
I gulp hard and watch as a look of consternation crosses his brutalist features once more. “How’d you get down here? Did you walk?”
I should lie. Ireallyshould lie. Instead, I nod.
“Oh, baby girl. Wrong answer.” He suddenly lifts from the ground, little flares of light traveling over his skin—skin I’m starting to notice is newly marked with glittery designs that I can see only when he lights himself up from within. They’re startling swirls, all over his body. Beautiful, even if nothing else about him is. Delicious? Absolutely. But beautiful? Not anymore.
He comes to a stop a few feet in front of me, hesitating like he’s nervous about something.
Nervous? Taranis? Ha. What a joke.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I shake my head. “N-nothing.”
“Spit it out.”
“You ... you just look really different.”
“No shit.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I sigh as I gesture to his body. “I mean your face. Your features. The Wyvern’s face didn’t look different after his reversion, but yours does.”
He gives me a dull look. “You mean I’m ugly.”
