My eyes roll, and Damien gives me a confused look. I mask my weirdness with a tense smile. It doesn’t seem to change the perplexed thoughts he’s clearly having about me.
“The fae are . . . enchanting.”
“Conniving. You mean conniving,” I correct.
His laughter rumbles out of him in a delicious sound that I want to taste.
Ther-a-pist, Catherine the Cunt enunciates.
“I don’t know how you know that, but yes. They’re conniving. They like promises, and they force those promises.”
“You were stupid enough to make an agreement with a fae, huh?” I bend the fingers of my hand that’s smooshed between my body and his. It arches at an awkward angle to skim up and down the hard, cracked lines of his abdomen.
His dark eyes glance down to where I’m liberally touching him, but he doesn’t comment on it. Every step he takes through the twisting forest is an easy, fluid move. I’m not jostled as we travel, and when he jumps and leaps, he holds me closer in the sweetest way.
I never agreed with my father and his adamant hate. Not all demons are monsters.
Damien isn’t bad.
He hasn’t shifted fully, though . . .
“Well, a promise is a promise,” he says. “And it’s a good deal. I get something out of the agreement.”
My eyebrow lifts at that.
Fae don’t give anything for nothing. And whatever they’re getting in return, it’s nothing good, I’m sure.
“Stop talking,” Remorseless growls, storming by us. He holds back a branch for his friend, but gives me a glare as he searches my face.
If I could flip him off right now, I would.
Instead, I keep stroking my fingers along his friend’s chest, and that seems to be just as offensive to him. To be a real pain in his ass, I lean my head against the bronze god-like man’s chest, and I hear his throat clear, his big arms tensing around me.
Guilt drops through me as I realize how he must feel. I stop immediately. My hand drops, and I pull away as Zav storms off.
Damien’s kind dark gaze meets mine.
“Sorry,” I whisper in the smallest voice.
I’m his prisoner, bound in his arms in nothing more than a thin shirt and panties, and I’m the one apologizing to him. It’s weird, I know. But I remember the way men used to paw at me. I remember the way they used me to get closer to my father or even my brother. And I know how fae treat demons like they’re an object at every chance they get.
I hate it.
“It’s fine,” he says with a tiny smile pulling at his lips.
“It’s not fine. Never let anyone make you feel uncomfortable or used.” The words snap out of me before I can stop them.
His brows dip as he stares down at me.
“Trust me, you didn’t make me feel uncomfortable,” he says, his words fanning along my jaw.
I blink a few times before meeting his shining eyes.
“What do you mean?”
His lips part, that smile clinging to his sexy mouth as he looks away from me with the slightest hint of a blush kissing his cheeks.
“I mean if I thought you were coming on to me for a reason other than to piss Zaviar off, I’d let you go right now. Maybe you’d run or maybe your hands would drift down my body some more, but I’d absolutely let you go just to find out.”
He’s smiling so hard that I can’t help but smirk right back at him.
“So you’re telling me you’re an idiot.”
“An idiot?” His voice raises, but his smile never falters.
“You’d unchain your prisoner for a simple hand job. That’s . . . not exactly smart.”
His head dips, and his lips graze my ear for a single second. “I said I’d let you go. I never said I’d unchain you. You don’t need your hands for what I had in mind.” His dark, sinful rasping words shiver right down to my core, and I shift slightly in his arms.
It’s always the good ones you have to watch out for. The quieter they are, the filthier their mouths are when no one’s around.
And fuck me, I want to hear everything this man might want to whisper to me.
I lick my lips slowly as we stare at one another for several pounding beats of my heart.
“Let’s fucking go already,” Zav yells from several yards ahead of us.
Damien picks up his pace, and I’m left gaping at him. Until the vines clear and sunlight washes over my face as we step into a small clearing cut away in the thick forest.
And there stands a single house built among the branches and leaves. It’s built between the trees, boards and wood extending across branches, rooms and windows drifting higher and higher among the towering treetops.
What is this place?
Zaviar opens the small front door, his shoulders filling the space as he disappears inside. I lean in a bit more to Damien now. Trepidation is finally a beating thing within my heart. He’s quiet as he brings me to the house. He walks in with as much authority as Zaviar, but when we enter, a larger, more terrifying man is just at the entry.
Stark black wings shadow over him, taloned at the ends with sharp, shining metal. His green eyes shift over my face, my shirt, my long legs, and then make their way slowly back up.
“You found her,” he whispers.
I straighten my pitiful posture the best I can and give him my harshest glare.
It’s not much, but it’s all I have against the men who are really starting to outnumber me.
I was an idiot for feeling safe with Damien. He’s a stranger.
They all are.
And I have no idea what they want with me.
Inky black smoke wafts across the floor, drifting into the room in a way I remember. In a way that’s terrifyingly familiar.
A figure enters. Smoke drifts around her sharp features like mystical hair, transparent and weightless. Big black eyes settle on me as a smile cuts into her face.
My heart calms when I see her eerie features.
“Sister!” Corva says with a proud smile on her thin lips, and the sight of her alone makes happiness swells inside me, as well as uneasy apprehension.
It really is good to be home.
4
Bond of Sisters
“Thanks so much for sending the welcoming committee to get me,” I tell her, my arms still flat at my side thanks to my bindings, but I flash her a charming smile as if I’m quite the comfortable guest in her home.
“They are the brutish type, aren’t they?” Her smoky hair drifts around her face as she stares at me with frighteningly excited attention.
She wants something.
Corva always wants something. But I think exile does that to a person. She was exiled from our family centuries before I was. I used to think she was whiny and selfish for always sending whisper winds to our father, begging him for forgiveness. Now I see the green grass for what it truly is on the other side.
Dog shit. The green grass where my father lives is total dog shit.
The three brooding, but distractingly shirtless, men looming around us watch us like snakes about to strike . . . What do they have to do with my cruel sister?
Dark fae are dangerous. But Corva, she’s a silent killer. The kind you have to play games with if you want to keep your life.
So I tread carefully.