A Girl in Black and White (Alyria 2)

“None.” The response was immediate.

I held back a laugh. This was beginning to be too easy. Didn’t Titans have more sense?

I met his eyes. “You’ve made three mistakes. Want me to tell you your first one?”

His lips formed a frown, but his gaze said he was intrigued.

“Meeting me.”

He ran his tongue across his teeth. “My second?”

“Speaking down to me.”

He nodded like he was pretending to listen, but actually thinking about whether he should kill me or have fun with me first. “Third?”

“Falling in love with me.”

He blinked, then laughed in disbelief. “And how did you come to that conclusion?”

“Easy.” I smiled. “You’re about to fall to your knees and admit it.”

His eyes grew suspicious, hesitant.

“Now.”

His face contorted in anger and confusion, while it seemed he was going through an internal struggle; but then, his knees hit the deck with a thud. It appeared as though acclamations of love were a little harder on him than kneeling at my feet because he gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t stop a few words of amazement at my ‘beauty’ and endearments from slipping past his lips. However, he could work on his expression and not spit the words at me.

Now, this was what it looked like to take away a man’s manhood. Hopefully, Henry wasn’t watching . . .

The other Titan’s gaze narrowed on the scene, taking a step in our direction. “Archer,” he barked, but Archer failed to respond; instead his eyes were on me, mesmerized—but truly hating every moment of it. I’d never known a man could look like he’d kiss your feet if you but let him and like he wanted to strangle you at the same time until I began cleaning these docks up and compelling slavers to quit their day job.

I lifted my shoulder at the confused Titan watching his friend kneel at my feet. “What can I say? I guess I’m as ‘stunning as the sun,’” I mocked Archer—he really could work on his compliments—before adding, “Not the fairest in the land as my grandmother says, but surely close if I could make a Titan fall—”

“Quiet!” he snapped.

I frowned, wondering if Titans were ever taught manners. Surely that was involved in their years of training, and yet I couldn’t quite picture them sitting their big bodies at our cottage table with an etiquette book open.

Archer’s gaze grew hazy, confused—the sign he was shaking off the persuasion. He gritted, “You are a foolish wench,” but his body hadn’t caught up with his mind just yet, and he wasn’t able to move.

“But I’m your wench, aren’t I? Don’t you want to protect me? Your friend . . . he’s been looking at me wrong. I think he wants me. . .” I whispered, eyeing the other Titan who stood watching us with hesitant suspicion. “He wants your woman. Are you going to let him get away with it?”

The Titan’s eyes glazed over for a moment before pure hatred burned that haze away. He stood up, before taking slow steps back, his determined stare locked onto mine with each step.

His friend’s gaze narrowed. He was reaching for a blade strapped to his thigh, when Archer suddenly turned, without a pause, throwing his entire body weight into a punch that knocked the other Titan out flat. He hit the dock with a thud, and I thought it rocked the entire southern port.

I whistled, impressed.

Persuasion took time for me to get into someone’s head. I wasn’t so sure how well it’d work on a Titan because I knew they were taught to block their minds from magic. It’d been like trying to invade a brick wall, but with just a little searching, I found the tiniest crack, letting me in.

It was different than compulsion, in the way that I could manipulate their thoughts and actions without having to tell them to do it in direct words. Though I could do both, sometimes it was a toss-up of which worked better on someone. Compulsion not working so well on those who were trained to block magic because they could feel it coming; persuasion was like a simple thought or emotion entering their mind, and before they knew it, they were mine.

Before I knew what happened, I was lifted off the docks by an arm around my waist, a fist in my hair pulling my lips to his.

Drat.

I always forgot this part. You can’t drill possessive thoughts into a man’s head without him acting like a possessive lunatic in return. I thought I’d learned my lesson the last time, but apparently not. This was the downside of persuasion.

His lips slanted over mine, and I pushed on his chest, trying to make him stop so that I could breathe. My lungs burned. Titans had no tact; although I couldn’t exactly say that because when Weston had kissed me, it’d hadn’t lacked any finesse.