“Don’t think either of us think that time was wasted,” he countered.
“Fucking focus, Minos,” I snapped. “What?” I asked when his eyes seemed to flash a little, well, redder than usual.
To that, he shrugged. “Not used to you saying my name,” he told me. “Anyway, where were the abductions?” he asked, trying to breeze right by that little admission, which, of course, made me hyper-fixate on it even as I rattled off the locations of the kidnappings and then the one set of bones that had been found.
I mean, his eyes didn’t flash for no reason, right? Just having normal conversations didn’t do that. Maybe they flashed like that during sex, but it was usually too dark to really tell.
I imagined they only did something like that when there was some strong emotion attached.
So, one had to conclude that he was having strong emotions about hearing me say his name?
It didn’t really make a lot of sense.
Curious, I decided to try it out casually over the rest of the night when we visited the site where the bones were found, then eventually stopped to plot out the locations on a map, trying to get a better ‘view’ of the whole situation.
And each time I said it, there was a flash.
Once, a little rumbly, growling sound came out of him at the same time.
“What? Are you seeing something?” I asked, moving to stand next to him where he was bent forward over the hood of my car, looking at the map.
The heat from his body immediately made a shiver course through me. The cold had long-since burrowed into my bones, cooling me from the core and outward.
Demons, though, they emanated heat. Even though they, apparently, often felt cold.
Somehow feeling the shiver, Minos took a slow, deep breath, and not a second later, I felt the warm, velvet-softness of his wing close around me, drawing me into his warmth.
I knew I needed to pull away.
First, because his wings had no business being out in public.
Granted, we were parked down an abandoned side street, but still.
Second, though, because I was supposed to recoil from all the things that made him other, that made him the enemy.
Aside from that forked tongue because… come on.
All that being known, though, I didn’t pull away.
No.
What did I do?
I scooted in closer.
My whole body brushed his from knee to shoulder, and I actually needed to wrap my arms around my waist to keep myself from wrapping them around him, from getting closer to that comforting—borderline hypnotic—warmth.
“Did you find something?” I asked, my voice a strange, choked sound.
“I don’t know,” Minos admitted, voice lower than usual, deeper. “I feel like there is something about here,” he said, stabbing a finger at the map, “that I am forgetting.”
“Like from history of the area?” I asked.
“Yeah. Long fucking time ago, but there’s something. I just can’t drag it up,” he admitted.
“Like how long ago?” I asked, figuring I could look at the archives back at The Academy.
To that, he let out a little airy snort.
“Long enough that I am struggling to remember it,” he said. “A couple human lifetimes, maybe?”
“I can try to look into that,” I said, zeroing in on the space he’d circled. It looked to be a winding neighborhood with a small park at the end of the dead-end.
“I can try to ask Ace,” Minos said.
“You can’t—“ I immediately started to object.
“I’m not going to tell him why,” Minos cut me off. “I will just casually bring it up. Ace has the mind of a steal trap. Doesn’t forget shit. If there was something going on there, he will know it.”
“Okay,” I agreed, knowing it was time to pull away, to part, to go our separate ways for the night to get some research done.
But I couldn’t seem to force my legs to move.
God, it was so warm.
It seeped down into my marrow and chased that chill away.
“Tired?” Minos asked, voice soft, and I realized I’d been standing there in the warmth enough to start to lean into him as my eyes decided not to stay open anymore.
He’d even managed to turn to face me, wrapping both wings around me as I must have been nodding in and out.
“I have to go and get some research done.”
“You need to go to bed,” he countered. And you could tell how tired I was because when his arms moved around me, pulling me tight against his chest, I didn’t even think to pull back. “Have you been getting any sleep?”
My shoulder shrug was all I could manage.
I was aware of him reaching down, grabbing my legs, wrapping them around his waist, then moving. I was even aware of him moving us into the backseat of my car, then situating me across his lap.
And all during that, I knew the right thing to do.