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“Get the fuck out, Adephis,” he snapped, yanking Lara up straight and sliding his hand around from her nape to her throat. “She might have cheated, but Ms. Townsend has succeeded in winning her game, and her freedom.”
“I can’t—”
Thunder cracked as Seth’s temper fractured, revealing a fraction of his true nature. Adephis was right when he said Seth wasn’t human—as the slippery hold on his control grew tenuous, the beast prowled from the dark.
Death at its finest.
“Get the fuck out of my territory,” he snarled, the sound thick and terrifyingly wet. Indeed, it was enough to have Lara trembling, her fragile little body quaking in the shadow of his ire. “I misspoke earlier when I said we were equals, brother. You will never be equal to me, no matter how many millennia pass. I assure you, this situation will be dealt with accordingly, once we have some privacy.”
Adephis scowled, obviously unwilling to press the matter further when Seth was in a mood. The full beauty of his wings unfurled, the light taking on a crystal-clear edge as they spread wide and began to spark. “One way or another, she has to die, Seth. Remember that before you damn the world to hell.”
So fucking dramatic, he thought with derision. The world would no more go to hell if he took Lara as his lover for all eternity than it would if a church pianist hit a wrong note in a Sunday morning service.
As the angel went back to where he’d come from, those golden sparks ascending rapidly, Seth turned his attention back onto the female squirming in his grasp. There were questions to be answered, and he wanted to know just how much of a fool she’d made of him with her sleight of hand.
Chapter Five
LARA
Uh-oh.
It was the only coherent thought left in her head as her body took a short flight through the air to land with a hard expulsion of impact on the bed. Before she could roll away and try to explain her actions, the man she’d essentially staked a lifelong claim on pounced on top of her, straddling her thighs as he gripped her wrists, slamming her hands down next to her head and pinning her facedown into the cool sheets.
She’d taken a huge gamble, and it had paid off.
The only question was, how much would she have to pay in return?
“Is that tattoo real, or is that another lie?” he demanded.
“It’s as real as I am.”
“That’s debatable,” he muttered bitterly. “You’ve had my name inked into your skin all this time? How long have you had this little coup planned? Is any of your bullshit true?”
Ouch, that hurt. Lara supposed she deserved it, because he was partly right. Not about the coup—all she wanted was him, in whatever form he chose. As far as she was concerned, her heart had spoken, and she was taking steps to give it what it wanted. Her happiness was tied to him, and she truly believed that his was linked to her.
“I lied about the psychic, and about not knowing your name,” she confessed again. “My grandmother really was a powerful Wiccan, my mother did only dabble, and I have learned a few things. I got the tattoo when I realized you were more than just a secret obsession. I haven’t planned anything other than what to say to you when we finally met.” She tried to roll over, but his weight was an effective restraint. “I had no way of knowing when we would, but it was guaranteed. I couldn’t face blowing my one opportunity when it came, then you appeared out of nowhere looking for me and I almost blew it anyway.”
“There were options available to you. Suicide would have allowed you to schedule the meeting down to the last second.”
“Well, yeah, but if the church is to be believed, suicide is a sin. I don’t know how the whole dying process happens. If I’d done that, maybe I would have bypassed you and gone straight to hell, as promised.”
Seth sighed heavily. “No one bypasses me, Lara. Every single living thing has to pass by me when they die. Besides, people aren’t penalized for what they can’t control. There are no black marks on a soul for being gay, having piercings, getting an abortion…the list is endless. What would be the point of torturing a soul who was tormented and troubled enough in life to try and find peace from their pain?”
At least the ones in charge of the ever-after stuff had compassion. Not that she was looking at killing herself anytime soon, but it was nice to think that those damned souls weren’t as damned as they thought. Maybe they had a chance at finding their peace.
“There are two options ahead of you, and unfortunately Adephis was right in saying they both result in your death. It is unavoidable—the cog in the system must be removed. What happens after that is down to you.”
Lara wiggled. “You seem to be forgetting what we agreed on, Seth. If I won the game, I got to live my life the way I wanted for the next few decades. I won the goddamn game.”
“You manipulated a situation with the clear intention of cheating in order to win. By rights, that makes the claiming of your winnings null and void. Besides, I don’t recall agreeing to where you would live out the remainder of your borrowed time.”
She couldn’t stop the gasp of shock. “And you call me a cheater!”
“I didn’t qualify a certain part of the agreement, and neither did you,” he corrected. “So, tell me exactly what you did to get us here. I know you didn’t rig the system to summon me, but you put something in motion.”
Yeah, she really had. She couldn’t even claim she’d done so in innocence, because she hadn’t. She’d set her sights on the goal, made every preparation she could think of to be ready when the opportunity rose, and now she was getting down and dirty with the Grim Reaper.
“Grandmother had some books—not spell books,” she assured him quickly when she felt him vibrate with outrage. “She believed that manipulating other people’s emotions was morally wrong, and she passed that train of thought to my mother, and me. These were old texts, mainly lore and legend, but there was a section in one of them referring to immortality and the human race’s pursuit of living forever.”
