Page 303 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Even as his familiar scent ensconced me. He used his chin to gently guide my head against the crook of his neck as he marched from the room, his shadows seizing the collar of the jacket and tugging it to my chin, tucking it around me as his hands wrapped the silky fabric around my backside.

I drifted away. Burrowing deeper into myself as the hammer of his pulse lulled me toward sleep.

That day on the beach, I’d picked up a cone snail.

Beautiful. Deadly. Like the man clutching me as if I was something precious—something to be protected. They were much the same, I supposed—luring unsuspecting victims in with mesmerizing patterns, then stinging once you got close.

I didn’t feel the sting, but by the time we’d reached Auntie’s manor, I’d been paralyzed. Insidious, that venom. Just like him.

The snail died, stuck in that bucket. I hadn’t meant to hurt him. Hadn’t meant to kill an innocent creature just waiting for a meal. But I did. Because his exterior was mesmerizing.

Maybe I felt a bit like that shell now. Dried out. Hollow.

Maybe when I’d seen this man across the bar three years ago, I’d forgotten the lesson: never reach for the bewitching things in the world without knowing what they contained.

Because I’d wanted him too. To pluck him from that crowd and add him to my collection of lovely things.

Forgotten him just as quickly when I couldn’t find him.

And then he’d turned up on Magnolia’s front walk. Her rescuer. The only male she felt safe with in the weeks after that attack. The first male she’d allowed back into her space in two years—when he saved us both all over again.

“Why?” I breathed, those three letters feeling leaden across my tongue as numbness crept through my body.

“Because you are mine to protect,” he whispered, the surprised whoosh of air tickling the top of my scalp. As if he knew I wasn’t just asking about tonight, his tone was scraped raw as he added, “Because monsters love to break all things beautiful, and I cannot bear it.”

A loud thwack had me jolting to see where we were, what was happening, but his shadows wrapped around me in a gentle caress, easing me back against his chest as though he couldn’t stand for me to see the carnage in the castle. As though he had to keep me close. And for a moment—just a breath—I let myself sink against him. The man who’d haunted my dreams since that night in the club, who’d cursed my nightmares since he reappeared on Magnolia’s step.

Returned to her.

For her.

And just for that moment, I let my weakness convince me that some piece of him—the barbaric protector that tore demons to pieces with his bare hands, that ripped jugulars out with his godsdamned teeth—was the man I’d thought he’d been.

Because the pathetic reality was: I needed him. To be held in powerful arms, evaluated by gentle hands, to feel the warmth of a human being who meant it only for comfort.

So, I let him hold me. Buried myself against his chest and inhaled the scent of a man ripe with power. I’d always drowned myself in the physical. Sex was such a simple pleasure—an escape, a rush of happy hormones before sleep took me. I missed the companionship of too-charming, too-handsome men offering nothing but a good time. The steady saw of their breathing and warmth of their bodies beside mine.

So I let the shadows cradle me, gentle as silk and steady as steel.

Because he saved me.

And regardless of his motivations, regardless of whatever bullshit he spewed about the prophecy, for that, I was grateful.

A door clicked softly behind us.

My gaze flitted around the dark space he’d slowed in.

His dark space. The rich black satins and burgundies said enough.

“Leave us,” he ordered gruffly. “But Kade?”

“Yes?”

“You may collect the prizes owed to you, but if you wish to prove your loyalty, you will swear something to me.”

“Name it.”

“They are never to know rest.”