He could practically feel her arched brows climbing toward her hairline.
“You’re already my prisoner. You’re chained up and collared.”
“Thanks for that wonderful reminder.” Her words were so sweet they dripped poison.
“I mean, there’s no need for me to lie to you. If I had killed your brother—and I didn’t—then what would be the point of the deception? It’s not like you can try to kill me again. I have you secured.”
“You think you have me secured. I’ll get free eventually. And then you’ll be a dead man. A really dead man.”
He shuddered, possibly with excitement. How very … demented of him.
“You won’t be able to kill me.”
“Oh.” She chortled. “Is that a challenge?”
He wanted to see what he imagined was now a single brow arched in defiance. He conjured a lumoon to hover between them, and even though its light was purposefully low, he and Velle blinked owlishly at it. If her brow had been curved in defiance, he missed it.
“Not a challenge, just reality,” he mumbled, already distracted by the sight of her sitting—fucking beautifully naked—opposite him on the bed.
“It’s fortunate that you and I have such different ideas of reality, then.”
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“You’re so … gorgeous.”
Where did that come from? Sure, he’d been thinking it. How could he not when she was the most striking woman he’d ever set eyes on in all his life? But to think it was far different from making the admission—to his enemy.
It seemed impossible that he’d keep forgetting that one all-important fact…
“So I’ve been told.”
“You don’t sound happy about it. You don’t like being beautiful?” Every woman he’d ever known, including his Arabella, had always fretted, even if in secret, about their looks.
“I don’t like being used.”
Being used? Had he used her? Fuck, of course he had! She was his prisoner, and he’d screwed her like it was his mission in life, like he’d never be able to stop. He’d starved her, just like the goblin accused him, and then he’d fucked her when she wasn’t herself.
Damn, Baz.
“I don’t like having my decisions taken away from me,” she continued. “Obviously.”
Dread settled heavily in his stomach.
“This.” She gestured across the bed between them. “This is all your fucking fault.”
He scrunched his forehead. “This?”
“Yeah, this. Don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” She frowned. “You think I traipse about letting myself get chained up, collared like I’m a fucking pet, and then, what, I just can’t resist your impressive charms”—she glanced at his dick—“and can’t help but screw your brains out?”
“That is kind of what happened…”
She half shrieked, half growled—a fearsome sound that raised his hackles and, distressingly, caused his dick to begin to harden, yet again—and leaned toward him across the bed. She bared her fangs; they were tinged pink with his blood.
“You starved me till I succumbed to bloodlust.”
“I didn’t starve you. You starved yourself. I offered myself up for you to feed every day since you’ve been locked up here. As soon as I recovered from your stabbing me all but in the damn heart, I offered myself to you. Repeatedly. You refused me.”