“So you think you can ‘deal’ with me,” he said. The insolent, silken tone of his voice stroked down her spine even as it raised the danger level in the room. “You can try.”
She raised her head and met his gaze. She watched her own hand move out, grasp the stem of her iced water and toss the contents into his face.
Water cascaded down his face and neck. His chair came down on all four legs. His eyes filled with lightning. She pushed to her feet and backed away from the table as he came to his feet in a leisurely movement.
A sharp rap sounded at the door. His head snapped around, and he glared as the rap sounded again. She took that moment to escape toward the bedroom. His soft growl followed her. “Goddammit, Tricks. Go ahead, try to run. See what good that does you.”
She scowled. Try to run? Hell, no. She stormed out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She flipped the kitchen faucet on and started pulling all the mugs and glasses out of the cabinets. She filled each one with water and lined them up on the kitchen counter.
She’d had it. And she had not just merely had it—she had really most sincerely had it.
Just a week ago, before she had even left New York, she had ambushed Tiago so she could smack him in the back of the head and yell at him for cursing at her. They had lived for her entire stay in New York—two hundred years, to be exact—as near strangers. Then all of it sudden it was “Goddammit, Tricks” or “Tricks, goddammit” with him. When her temper had finally erupted, he had had the gall to laugh in her face and call her cute.
Ordering her around. Acting like a world-class bastard. He was rude. He was crude (well, okay, maybe she didn’t have so much of a problem with that). He hardly paid attention to a thing she said. One word from her, and he went ahead and did whatever the hell he liked anyway. He scared normal sane people and manhandled her without permission, and maybe his particular brand of crude, dominating sexuality was exactly the kind of thing that made her knees melt and her foolish heart go pitty-pat but that didn’t give him any right—
In the meantime, Tiago stalked to the suite door and yanked it open, his anger fueled by the fact that he hadn’t been paying attention and hadn’t heard someone approach the suite door until they had knocked. That damn faerie was messing with his head and screwing up all kinds of finely honed instincts.
Cameron Rogers stood with her hand raised to knock again. He barked, “What.”
The lieutenant’s hand lowered as she stared at him. Her cinnamon-sprinkled features became suffused with sudden strain. “Ah,” she said with a cough. “Looking a little damp there, sentinel.”
“Fuck you,” he snapped. He swiped at his dripping face with the back of his hand. “What do you want?”
The policewoman’s mouth twitched but she quickly sobered. “Councillor Severan will speak with her highness at her earliest convenience. One of her attendants has been insisting on delivering that message in person.”
He mentally dismissed the attendant. Tiago and Cameron had already agreed; nobody was allowed on the floor that wasn’t on their preapproved list. “Tell Severan her highness is indisposed. We’ll get back to her when we’re ready.”
Rogers lifted a sandy eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell the Councillor that yourself?”
“I’ve got my hands full at the moment,” he muttered. He slammed the door shut and glared at it as he heard Rogers laugh.
Niniane listened as Tiago spoke with whoever had knocked on the door. Soon enough his arrogant, oversized silhouette filled the kitchen doorway.
She turned off the faucet, picked up the nearest full glass and threw the water on him.
He stood absolutely still, a giant statute of carved muscle and bone. Something dangerous throbbed in the air between them. Her heart pounded. “You did not just do that,” he said in a conversational tone. “Nobody is that suicidal.”
“You can’t do anything to me. You swore you would protect me, and I’m injured.” She picked up the next full glass and threw the water on him. “What is my name, asshole?”
He tilted his head and put his hands on his hips as he regarded her. His obsidian gaze glittered with a strange light.
“My name,” she said between her teeth. The next one was a mug. She threw the water on him. “You know what it is. I’ve reminded you often enough. Funny enough, it is not ‘Tricks, goddammit.’ And if you ever shorten it to Ninny, I WILL BITE YOUR NOSE OFF!”
His broad, powerful shoulders jerked, and the clear sharp lines of his stern mouth spasmed. “Back in New York you told me I was supposed to say something else. What was it again? Oh yeah. Goddamn, ma’am.”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” she shouted. She grabbed hold of the next mug with both hands.
Suddenly he was behind her, his sodden chest pressed against her back. His hands encircled her wrists. He said in a strangled voice, “Lady, back away from the kitchen sink.”
She clung to the mug with all her strength as he tried, gently, to pry her fingers away. Water sloshed over the rim, splashing their hands and drenching the countertop. “It’s the last one,” she panted. “I’ve got to throw it.”
He buried his wet face in her hair and exploded. She tried to twist her wrists out of his grasp, quite without hope of getting free, as he roared with laughter. He managed to say after a moment, “I don’t think you have a single sane synapse firing in your brain.”
“I don’t think you’re any judge of sanity,” she snapped. Disgusted, she dropped the mug onto the counter. They had jostled all the water out of it. “And in case you’re thinking of patting me on the head and calling me ‘cute’ again, I’ll have you know all of my weapons are still poisoned.”
He let go of her wrists and turned her around, pressing her back against the counter. His drenched T-shirt soaked wet patches into her lounge suit, the muscles of his hard torso flexing with sinuous strength. The sparkle in his eyes turned smoky as her curvy body wriggled against his. “Oh, I don’t want to pat you on the head, faerie,” he said low in his throat in a deep purring growl that vibrated through her body. He bent closer until his lips brushed hers. “I want to fuck your mouth.”
Said mouth dropped open, and the breath left her body. She couldn’t believe what she just heard. “You–you what?”
The world swung as he picked her up and carried her in long, swift strides to the bedroom. He set her on the bed. She suddenly found herself lying down, as he planted a knee on the mattress by her hip and pinned her wrists over her head with one hand.
She looked up his body, from those strong legs that went on forever to the tight angle of his hips, the lean, long torso and the cut of his muscled arms. He bent his head until his mouth just brushed the sensitive skin of her open lips, and he spoke the words right into her body. “I said I want to fuck your mouth, first with my tongue”—he licked her lower lip—“and then with my finger, and then with my cock. Maybe that will shut you up.”
“You can’t talk to me that way,” she whimpered. He was outrageous, completely uncivilized. She had to find the switch in her head that would turn off her traitorous arousal. She twisted her wrists against the long fingers that held her with such ease.
“Why not?” Sharp white teeth nipped at her upper lip. “Don’t you like it?”
Like it? Like was far too insipid a word for how she reacted to what he did or what he said. His raw sensuality was whipping up a hurricane in her body. Confused and a little scared, she shifted restlessly, and his black glittering gaze swept over her.
“You said you were sorry. Right after you kissed me,” she said. She hadn’t meant for it to sound so breathless or accusing.