I straightened my head. His hand followed. “Are you going to let me go?” I demanded in a quiet voice.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’m not sure I’m ready for whatever it is that you’re about to do.”
I stared at the mass of dark vines above me. “Let me go.”
“So you can run back out there and get yourself killed?” he countered.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“You’re right.” A pause. “And you’re also wrong. But since saving your life is still interfering with my evening plans, I want to make sure my generous and benevolent actions are worth what I lost by coming to your aid.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I did not ask for your help.”
“But you have it nonetheless.”
“Let me go, and you can get back to your oh-so-important evening plans that apparently do not involve having the common decency to care about senseless murders,” I retorted.
“There are a couple of things you need to understand,” he drawled, his thumb sliding along my jaw, causing me to stiffen at the unexpected and unfamiliar caress. “You have no idea what my evening plans were, but yes, they were very important. Nor do you know what I do and do not care about.”
My face scrunched. “Thanks for sharing?”
“But you are right about one thing,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “There isn’t a decent bone in the entirety of my body. So, no, I do not have this thing you call common decency.”
“Well, that’s…something to be proud of.”
“I am,” he agreed. “But I will pretend to be decent right now and let you go. However, if you attempt to run back out there, I will catch you. You will not be faster than me, and the whole thing will just annoy me.”
His devotion to stopping me—a complete stranger—from getting myself killed actually seemed like a rather decent thing to do. But I wasn’t going to point that out. “Have I given you any indication that I care about annoying you?” I retorted.
“I have a feeling you don’t. But I’m hoping you discovered whatever smidgen of common sense exists inside you and have decided to use it.”
My entire body prickled with anger. “That was rude.”
“Be that as it may, do you understand?” he asked.
“And if I say no? Will you stand here and hold me all night?” I spat.
“Since my plans are now shot, I do have some spare time on my hands.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I snarled.
“Actually, no.”
Every part of my being ached with the desire to punch him. Hard. “I understand.”
“Good. To be honest, my arms were getting tired.”
Wait. Was he insinuating that I was—?
He released me, and gods, he was tall. There had to be a good foot between the ground and my feet based on how hard I landed. I stumbled forward, and his hands clasped around my arms, steadying me. Another decent act I was not even remotely grateful for.
Tearing myself free, I whirled toward him as I reached for my dagger.
“Now you’ve got to be kidding me.” The male sighed, snapping forward.
He was as fast as a strike of lightning, catching my wrist before I could even free my blade. I gasped. Dressed in all black, he was nothing more than a thick shadow. He yanked me toward his chest as he spun us, forcing me back. Within a few too-quick heartbeats, he had me trapped again, this time between the vine-covered wall and his body.
“Dammit.” I leaned back, lifting my right leg—
“Can we not do this?” He shifted, simultaneously wedging a thigh between mine and catching my other wrist, bringing my hands together.
I fought, using every ounce of strength I had as he lifted my hands, stretching my arms above my head and then pinning my wrists to the wall. Flowers broke free, raining down on us. I drew up my other leg. I just needed to get space—
“I’ll take that as a no.” He leaned in then, pressing his body to mine.
I froze. Air lodged in my throat. There didn’t seem to be a part of me that wasn’t in contact with him. My legs. Hips. Stomach. Breasts. I could feel him, his hips against my stomach, his stomach and lower part of his chest against my breasts—his skin through his clothing, cool as the first touch of autumn. My senses were a chaotic mess as I forced air into my lungs—a breath that was fresh and citrusy. I couldn’t even smell the sweet peas beyond his scent. No one—not even Sir Holland or anyone I fought who knew what I was—got this close to me.
I hadn’t seen his other hand move, but I felt it slide behind my head, becoming an immovable wedge between me and the wall. “There’s something I need you to understand.” His whisper filled with tendrils of darkness again. “While I’m not suggesting you don’t attempt to fight me—you do whatever you feel you need to—you should know that you will not win. Ever.”
There was a finality to his words that sent a tremor through my captured hands. I tipped my head back and looked up…and up. He was well over a foot taller than me, maybe even as tall as the Primal of Death was. A shiver of unease prickled the nape of my neck. Most of his face was cast in shadow, and all I could see was the hard line of his jaw. When his head tilted into a slice of moonlight, I saw him.
This man was…he was absolutely, without a doubt, the most stunning man I’d ever seen. And I’d seen some gorgeous men. Some from here within Lasania, and others from kingdoms that stretched into the east. Some had finer, more symmetrical features than the one holding me to the wall, but none were put together so perfectly, so…sensually as this man’s. Even in the moonlight, his skin was a lustrous, golden-brown color, reminding me of wheat. His cheekbones were high and broad, his nose straight as a blade, and his mouth…it was full and wide. He had the kind of face an artist would love to shape with clay or capture with charcoal. But there was also a coldness to his features. As if the Primals themselves had crafted the lines and planes and forgot to add the warmth of humanity.
I looked up to his eyes.
Silver.
Eyes that were an incredible, luminous shade of silver, bright as the moon itself. Beautiful. That was all I could think at first, and then…I saw the light behind his pupils, the wispy tendrils of eather.
“You’re a god,” I whispered.
He said nothing while instinct fired through me, urging me to either submit or run—and to do either of those two things fast. It was a warning, a reckoning that screamed I wasn’t even inches away from one of the most dangerous predators in any realm.
But I…I couldn’t get over how he looked no more than a handful of years older than me, somewhere between Ezra’s and Tavius’s ages. That most likely wasn’t the case. He could be centuries older. But other than the night I was to be married, I’d never been this close to a being from Iliseeum before. It unnerved me how young he appeared.
It struck me then that I’d tried to kick a god—multiple times. I’d tried to stab a god.
And he…he hadn’t struck me down.
He hadn’t even hurt me. All he’d done was stop me from harming myself. And, well, now he was holding me here. Still, he could’ve done much, much worse.
Could that mean that he was from the Shadowlands Court and answered to the Primal of Death? My stomach tumbled. I had no idea if any of the gods that served the Primal of Death knew about me since any deal struck between a mortal and a god was known only to those two, but this deal had been different. It was quite possible that every god within the Shadowlands knew that the Primal had a Consort he hadn’t claimed, even though he’d bartered for one.