And that would be accurate on some level. My entire life lacked not only touch but also affection. I did crave it, but I wasn’t desperate enough to take whatever meager scraps were offered to me by anyone.
I just wanted his affection because I thought I’d had a taste of it before he learned the truth. He’d wanted me then, to the point of distraction, but I thought he had also been fond of me. That he cared. Now, there was only a physical desire, one that he’d likely deny to his very last breath.
Then what he said struck me. “Wait. Do you think you took advantage of me after you gave me your blood?”
“I knew what my blood would do to you. I should’ve been able to restrain myself or left you alone the moment you started feeling the effects.”
I stared at him. “My reaction had very little to do with your blood.”
“Sera.”
“And everything to do with my attraction to you. I told you that then. It hasn’t changed.”
His jaw flexed. “Even so, I should’ve been able to control myself instead of becoming a man with no control over his body.”
I laughed. “You are not only a man.”
“Just because I’m a Primal doesn’t mean my body responds differently.”
“I didn’t realize that Primals—or men in general—had such little control over their cocks,” I snapped, annoyed that he would excuse his reaction, his pleasure, as something he had no control over.
“That’s not what I—never mind.” His eyes flared bright briefly. “Let me see your wound.”
“Whatever.” I grabbed the hem and the slip underneath, lifting them to my ribs. “It’s not bad. See?” I looked down, cringing slightly at the thin gash running along the left side of my waist. “Just a flesh wound.”
“There’s no such thing as a flesh wound.”
I started to lower my sweater, but Nyktos palmed my hips. The contact startled me enough that I didn’t protest as he lifted me onto the desk. His hands lingered there. The reminder of his strength was always a surprise. It made me feel incredibly dainty, and I was not even in the same realm as dainty. No part of me wasn’t, as Tavius had once said, plump.
Fucking gross bastard.
Gods, I almost wished he was still alive so I could shove something harder than a whip down his throat.
Nyktos’s eyes lifted to mine. “You’re projecting again.”
“Sorry,” I muttered as he reached for the cloth. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. I’m doing it because I want to.”
He’d said that before. And my reckless heart leapt, just like then. He pressed his fingers to the skin beneath the wound, the touch gentle and yet another shock. I jolted.
“Sorry.” He withdrew his hand. “I didn’t mean to cause pain.”
“You didn’t. It’s just…I wish your touch was warm again,” I said, which wasn’t entirely untrue. “Did it warm because you fed?” I asked, knowing that Nyktos rarely fed. From what I could gather, Primals didn’t need to feed often unless they were wounded and weakened. And I had weakened him, just a little, when I hit him with that blast of eather.
He shook his head. “My skin has never warmed to the touch after feeding. It has always been cold.”
“Then why…?” I figured it out. “The embers?”
“I am Death,” he reminded me. “And you carry the embers of life in you. Your blood is what warmed my skin.”
“Will my blood have any other effects on you?”
There was a quick upward curl of his lips. “That is yet to be seen.”
I was staring way too hard at his mouth, so I shifted my gaze to his…throat. Something about what he’d said didn’t make sense. He wasn’t the true Primal of Death, just a Primal of Death. So why would his skin be cold in the first place? Then again, maybe it was because he was a Primal of Death.
Now I was just confusing myself. “I wonder if Taric could taste it. I mean, he knew I had at least one ember in me when he went through my memories, but if he hadn’t, would he still have known?”
Eather flashed brilliantly in Nyktos’s eyes. “No other will feed from you, so that’s not something you’ll need to worry about.”
My brows rose.
“But, yes,” he said, his voice thin. “He would’ve tasted it.”
“Does my blood taste like it smells?”
He was silent as he dipped the cloth into the water. “It tastes like a summer storm and the sun.”
An unsteady laugh left me as my chest warmed. “What does that even taste like?”
“Heat. Power. Life,” he said without hesitation. “Yet soft. Airy. Like sponge cake. Like…”
I was staring at his mouth again. “Like what?”
Nyktos cleared his throat, shaking his head. “By the way, when you think I’m moving too fast? I’m not actually moving—not in the way you think.”
I frowned. He was clearly changing the subject. “Then in what way are you moving?”
“I use eather to will myself where I want to go,” he said, gently pressing the cloth to the skin around the wound. “It’s called shadowstepping.”
I stared at him, my brows raised. “Isn’t that normally called plain old walking?”
Nyktos chuckled. “It’s a bit different than that. When I will myself to move like that, I’m becoming a part of the eather—the air around us. Mortal eyes simply cannot see us do it.”
Curiosity rose. “What does it look like?”
“A glimmer of shadow, moving very rapidly,” he answered. “And the more eather a god carries, the farther they can shadowstep, and the faster they move.”
“Is that what you did when you took me from the Great Hall in Wayfair?”
“Yes. I summoned mist to hide us first. And because you’re mostly mortal, it would have been a very painful experience for you if awake.”
I’d take his word for that, but then I remembered what he had told me about not being able to will himself from my lake. “So you can will yourself wherever you want to go…” He smirked. “How far can you…shadowstep?”
He glanced up at me. “As far as I want.”
I blinked slowly. “Then why do you use a horse? Or walk anywhere? If I could do that, I probably wouldn’t walk a foot.”
A faint grin appeared. “Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I need to.”
He’d said some variation of that before when we were at my lake. “I bet there are many things you can do that I have no idea about.”
His grin kicked up farther on one side.
“Will I be able to do that if I Ascend?”
“You will Ascend,” he corrected. “And it will all depend on how much eather you have in you. Based on what you’re already able to do, I imagine you will be able to shadowstep in some capacity. Many gods can. Though they cannot travel the distance a Primal can or cross realms.”
I tried to picture myself shadowstepping out of one space and into the next, and quickly decided that I probably wouldn’t ever walk normally again.
“What were you thinking about?” Nyktos asked after a couple of moments. “Just a few minutes ago when you felt as if you…wanted to murder someone.”
Caught off guard, I blurted out the truth. “Tavius.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he continued carefully wiping at the blood around the wound. “Part of me doesn’t want to know what made you think of him.” A lock of hair slipped from the bun he’d tied his hair back in, falling across his cheek. He was quiet as he dipped the cloth into the bowl again. “Did he hurt you before that day?”