To my abject horror, he smiles broadly and meets Damianos halfway to offer him a hearty dap.
And I realize then that my initial assumption wasn’t true. Uncle Clyde didn’t find me. He was brought here.
By Damianos.
The memory of Kirk slashing his own throat flashes through my mind…along with Damianos promise to punish me last night. “No! No! Please, no!”
Close, but too far away, I pound on the glass and scream my throat raw, begging Uncle Clyde to snap out of it and run while he still can.
However, I stop shouting and banging on the glass when instead of sticking the business end of the Mossberg in his own mouth, Uncle Clyde bumps knuckles with Damianos, gets in his car and drives away. Just drives away.
I watch his car disappear down the road, my mouth open, the sides of my fist still pressed against the cool glass.
What the hell?
As if to answer my question, the door slides open behind me.
I turn to find Damianos and he looks…different. Really, really different.
First of all, his eyes are glowing. They look like two amber stones, lit up from the inside. Second of all his tongue is forked. I know because, the first thing he does is whip it out, before quickly retracting it back in.
Like a frog.
No…no…like a snake, I amend. Fensa explained that dragons smelled with their tongues just like snakes do, after I asked what was up with her son Eos, occasionally licking the air.
He was smelling. Me, if the direction and intensity of his gaze was any indication.
I stare at him, and he stares at me, his nostrils flaring.
Then without any warning, he crosses the room, sweeps me up in his arms, and shoves that forked tongue into my mouth!
Chapter Twenty-Three
He kisses me. He kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before. Especially by my last boyfriend. Akwasi had been a “Hey, baby!” and an affectionate press of the lips. No tongue. No pressure.
Damianos is a fire. Burning me up.
All tongue. All pressure.
It’s not a choice to kiss him back. It’s a simple submission to physics. Fire eats matter. There’s nothing a bundle of sticks can do when it’s being consumed by flame.
We kiss, and my wolf sighs, finally back where she wants to be.
But then my human remembers… the kidnapping… the heat session… the baby…. Uncle Clyde!
I push at him, and it does absolutely nothing. Honestly, it feels like I’m pushing against a stone wall.
There’s nothing I can do to break free of this kiss. But to my shock, I don’t have to do anything else.
He immediately draws back, his glowing amber eyes staring down into mine, as his hands come to rest just beneath my shoulders. “Please accept my deepest apologies, Reverence. I was so excited to behold you again that I did not think before seizing you in my arms. I hope I did not offend you with my kiss. Or hurt you.”
I start to open my mouth to tell him off for his weirdly passionate, mind-melting kiss. But then I stop when his words fully sink in. “Wait…did you just apologize? And say please?”
His expression softens and he smiles down at me. “Yes, I said and meant all of those things, including being excited to behold you.”
I try to talk, but nothing comes out. I’m so shocked to hear those words from the mouth of Damianos Drakkon, the most arrogant and cruel prick I’ve ever met.
For a good few seconds, I’m at a total loss for words, but then I remember…. Clyde!
“Let me go!” I say, pulling all the way out of his arms. “I saw you with my uncle. Did you hypnotize him? Are you going to make him do something horrible too? Because if you do, I swear I’ll never fucking forgive—”
“Yes, I god spoke Clyde,” Damianos answers before I can finish. “I planned to have him kill himself in front of you. The thought was to show you the extent of my power over those you value so that you wouldn’t try to escape again. But as you can see, I changed my mind. I did not hurt your uncle. I simply sent him away with a command to forget that he had seen you in this place.”
He says this casually. Like we’re talking about the weather.
Relief blossoms through me even though I hardly understand. “Wait, what?” I ask, taking a huge step back. “I don’t get it. You were going to kill him, but then you decided not to? Why?”
He dips and turns his head so that I can no longer see his glowing eyes.
“I realize now that would be cruel. Too cruel.”
I jut my chin, barely able to believe what I’m hearing. “So you’re trying to say that after kidnapping me, chaining me to a bed, killing our kingdom’s gatekeeper, and threatening to grisly murder every other member of my immediate family that you just magically learned the concept of ‘too cruel’ overnight?”