“No, I don’t know. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to do what I always do: whatever it takes.”
“Specifically, what are you going to do?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Seriously?”
“What? It works on Lev.”
“I’m not your dear friend Lev.”
His eyes, instantly hungry, heated as they dipped up and down my body, lingering on the curves of my hips, my tits, my neck, and my lips. “I noticed.”
“Do you expect a reward for noticing that I’m not a man, one who can’t seem to help but stuff his tail down his throat at every opportunity?”
Baz turned from the cage to me. “Hey! He’s not that bad.”
“I’ve heard you say he speaks before he thinks, many times.”
I held steady, unwilling to acknowledge how Teo had said the same of me countless times. Hypocritical irony didn’t bother me when I was on the dishing end of it.
“So what? He’s family. That means you don’t get to talk shit about him.”
“I see. Only you do?”
“You understand me, my sweet dove.”
I blinked, then scowled. “Your sweet dove.”
“Ah-ha.”
“And what, exactly, do you think is sweet about me?”
We stood mere feet away from the cage, from where a phantom, now finally silent, observed our every move. Even so, he closed the distance between us and wrapped the Rillis rope thrice around my shoulders and tugged me against his ridiculously broad and sculpted chest.
He dipped his mouth to my ear. “Your delicious, exquisite blood, for one. Your plump, pretty lips, for two. Your pert, mmmmm, tasty nipples, for three. Your hot, dripping arousal, mmmm-mmmm-mmm-mmmm-mmmmmmm, for?—”
“Shhhhhhhh! Shut the fuck up.” Sensing the ghost’s attention on me like a cold winter wind, I flattened a hand to his chest and pushed against his armored wompa-leather vest. He didn’t show me the courtesy of budging so much as an inch.
“Do you mind?” I threw a meaningful look at the woman who’d been waiting possibly centuries for a rescue I still had no idea how we’d execute.
I whispered, “It’s not like I’m proud of how low I stooped. Besides, you made me do all that … stuff we did. It’s all your fault.”
His brows arched. “You forget, I was there too.”
“No, I don’t forget,” I snapped. I’d been trying and trying and trying to forget the feel of his mouth crushing mine, demanding more … the feel of his hot, strong hands touching me everywhere, claiming every part of me for himself … the feel of his delicious hardness sinking so deep inside me that he drove away the monster that sought every opportunity to take charge of me.
With a swing of his long hair that was the color of burnished sunshine, he glanced at our phantom. His ocean eyes, which were sparkling like the sun upon waves, darkened, becoming solemn. His hands had slunk around my waist, and now they squeezed my hips. His pinkies butted against the cover of my book.
“She doesn’t mind waiting a while longer,” he said. “It’s not like minutes are going to change anything for her.”
“You’re wrong.” I stared blankly at the ghost, traveling centuries back, to before my abduction, when Rafaela had last succeeded in caging me. I saw myself clinging to the bars, instants from shattering into so many parts I would never be able to be pieced together again—not even by Teo on his most patient day.
“Minutes do matter. By the Ethers, even seconds matter. Every single moment locked up in there takes everything to survive.” My voice had grown too soft, too laden with a past I’d probably never succeed in shaking. I had escaped Rafaela’s cage, but I hadn’t stopped being a prisoner. This time, my captor was Baz. I couldn’t allow there to be a next time.
I slipped my arms from beneath the band of his, and unwove the rope from around my torso. His attention on me was rapt, piercing, seeing what I should never have given him the opportunity to see.