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“I may not be able to feel your need, but I can hear the lie in your words, Risa.”
“I don’t care. I said at least forty-eight hours and I meant it. Maybe next time you’ll reconsider the roughhouse tactics and try a little more respect.”
And with that, I hung up, and turned my phone off for good measure. It would piss him off even more, but I really needed to make the point.
Although what I really needed— I stopped the thought and frowned. Because if I was honest, what I needed and what I wanted were two entirely different things. I might need Lucian’s brand of loving with a fierceness that was indescribable, but the person I wanted was Azriel.
And yet, I still feared taking that step. Still feared where it would lead, and what would happen when all this was over and he left for good.
Because I had a suspicion that if I let Azriel in, he could lay waste to my emotional being far more easily than Jak ever had.
I took a deep breath and slowly released it.
I couldn’t risk it. I shouldn’t risk it.
I closed my eyes and knew that more than likely I would risk it.
I shook my head at my own recklessness and walked into the main room. Where I stopped. Azriel was standing in his usual spot at the window, but his arms were crossed and tension rode his shoulders. Valdis was oddly silent. Neither of them was giving me any clue as to what he was feeling or thinking.
But in many ways, that was clue enough. After all, he knew precisely what I’d been thinking.
“Just because I can read your thoughts does not mean I always do,” he said softly.
“And yet you are right now.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
I scanned his broad back, willing him to turn around and face me. He didn’t. Meaning he wasn’t about to make this easy. This step, if I took it, would be my decision and my decision alone. Despite his words earlier, he wouldn’t do anything further to influence me. “You have no thoughts? No desires?”
“I have plenty of both, but ideally, none of them are ones that I should act upon.”
I forced my feet forward, closing the distance between us. Even though the heat radiating off him burned across my skin, making my breath catch and my pulse race, the few inches that now separated us still felt like a mile or more.
“And realistically?”
“Realistically, I wish to plunge Valdis’s screaming heart into the Aedh’s flesh and rip him asunder.”
Though there was no emotion in his voice, I felt it nonetheless. It burned inside me, bright and fierce. I licked my lips, wondering why I was suddenly so attuned to him. “Why do you want to kill him?”
He didn’t answer, but just for a moment, flames flickered down Valdis’s side, rich and red. The color of anger. The color of desire. It stirred through the threads of my being as sweetly as a caress.
“I didn’t think reapers were capable of an emotion as strong as jealousy.” I was standing so close to him that my breath washed across his shoulders as I spoke. His skin twitched so sharply it was almost as if I were flaying him.
“It is not jealousy,” he retorted. “I simply do not trust him. And I do not like the timing of that phone call, so soon after Logan was killed.”
“Lucian didn’t kill Logan. You found the shooter.”
“Yes, but who controlled the shooter? He was a Razan, Risa. Maybe he was Lucian’s Razan.”
“Lucian hasn’t got Razan.”
“How can you be sure of that? He has been on this earth for a long, long time. He may now revel in pleasure, but have no doubt he has also become proficient at lying.”
“You and I know it’s more a guess than a certainty.” I raised a hand and brushed my fingertips across the back of his neck, following the swirling tribal patterns inked into his skin. A dark fire seemed to ignite deep in the heart of them. “Lucian said he’d been stripped of most Aedh powers—how then could he possibly create human slaves and sustain them?”
