Damn, if he didn’t sound like an angsty, jilted lover. What the fuck?
He cleared his throat. “The bloodlust is on you, not me.” Was that fair? He didn’t know, didn’t currently care. “You tried to assassinate me.”
“And you have me leashed like I’m your pretty pet.” If words could injure, these would have sliced him wide open. He couldn’t help but smile at pretty pet. She truly was so pretty, even when she was furious, especially when she was furious. “Plus, you practically sawed me in half. So we’re even.”
“We’re not even. We’re not remotely close to even. I defended myself. You attacked me, unprovoked.”
“Avenging my brother is not ‘unprovoked.’ I’ll follow you to the very Igneuslands to punish you for taking Teo from me. There’s no place where you can go that I won’t find you. I’ll hunt you down.”
“So you’re saying I should just kill you now and save myself the trouble?”
She breathed heavily through her nostrils in visible puffs in the cold air. “I’m saying you should free me and release my power, and then you should fight me like a man.”
“You want to fight me in even combat?”
“Scorch yes I do.”
“You think you could beat me?”
“I don’t think, I know I can.”
“With our powers?”
“With or without, doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know what my power is?”
She hesitated. “No. You know mine though, right?”
“I do. It’s hard not to know when your family boasted about it for literal ages.”
She scowled. “Yeah, well…”
He didn’t intend to, but his gaze traveled down her neck, caked in blood, to her breasts, also smeared with dried blood.
When she lifted her arms, he assumed it was to cross them over her chest. Instead, she cupped her breasts and pushed them upward, jiggling them.
He sucked in a hard breath, his body finally warming.
With an irritated tsk, she dropped her spectacular tits. “You killed my brother. You made me fuck you. And you made me feed from you. I’ll never forgive you for any of it. I will hate you forever.”
“I didn’t make you fuck me, and pretending otherwise doesn’t suit you. We were both there for all the times. We both know.”
She frowned and glanced away for a second. Her hair was a tangled mess. He wanted to pull her into his lap and take his time brushing through it, a desire he’d never admit to a living essence.
“And, for the last time, for fuck’s sake, I did not kill your brother. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can start figuring out who did kill him.”
She glared at Baz.
“You’re right only about the one thing. I did force the situation so you’d have to feed from me.”
She chuckled darkly. “I was there for that too.” Another glance to the room’s deep shadows. “Some, anyway,” she mumbled. “I don’t remember most of it.”
He rubbed a hand along the short beard on his jaw. It was sticky with blood. “I…” He slid the hand along the back of his neck. I’m sorry, almost spilled out, but he’d be damned if he’d apologize to the woman who materialized from the fog to murder him. “I couldn’t let you feed off anyone else.” He shrugged. “That leaves only me.”
She bit her lip, seemed only then to notice it was coated in blood, and sucked on her tongue. His body was growing warmer by the minute.
“There’s deer blood,” she said.
