He growled, a deep rumble that vibrated through her frame. “What did that crazy bitch do to you?”
“Shh, remember everything’s all right now,” she murmured. She cupped his face in both hands and searched his eyes. They were obsidian without any telltale flickering of white. She stroked his lean cheeks. He was such a proud man, and he was so handsome when he wasn’t looking like he might tear down skyscrapers or dismantle nations with his bare hands. “She healed me, and we talked for a bit. That’s all.”
His eyes narrowed. “Healed you,” he said.
She opened her eyes wide. “Completely, Tiago. It’s the most amazing thing. See for yourself.” She pulled back so that she could lift the top of her lounge suit and show him the silvery scar. “It hurt like a son of a bitch too. I could feel it knitting together inside.”
Tiago touched the small scar. The brush of his blunt calloused fingers was featherlight. “It doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“Not a bit. I feel like I did before the attack.” She fingered the tiny stitches. They looked like baby spiders against her pale skin. Ew, actually.
He frowned. “Those need to come out.”
She was opening her mouth to tell him she could take them out later when he picked her up and deposited her in an armchair as effortlessly as one might move a house cat. He opened his duffle bag, took out a toiletry kit and pulled out a small set of clippers. Then he knelt in front of her. She squirmed.
He smiled at her, a real smile and not his usual sardonic grimace, the kind that crinkled the edges of his eyes and revealed the handsome set of his features. “You sit still, faerie,” he ordered as he pushed up her top. She kept her knees pressed together and angled to the right as she tried to do as he said.
He bent close to make sure of the snip. His gigantic hands that were so gifted in killing were remarkably gentle as they brushed over her skin. She stared at his broad shoulders and dark bent head, and dug her fingers into the arms of the chair, her stomach clenched against a stir of arousal.
His smile deepened. He could sense it, she knew. He could scent the changes in her pheromones. Blood heated her cheeks. She felt exposed and trapped in the armchair with his large powerful body pressed against her legs, but she didn’t want to push him away. He snipped the stitch and told her, “Here comes the tug.”
She nodded and he pulled the stitch out. He soothed the area, quite unnecessarily she thought, by massaging it with the ball of his thumb. Then he bent close again to remove the second stitch.
She waited for him to move, to straighten away from her, but he did nothing. Instead he tilted his head and stared at her scar. Something unfamiliar moved over his normally aggressive expression. It was a quiet reflectiveness that opened a window to that landscape hidden inside him and revealed—pain.
Her forehead crinkled. He was angry, irritable, rude, protective and sarcastic, comforting in danger and calm under fire and unrepentantly, aggressively antisocial. He was simply an unconquerable spirit. It hurt her to think of him in pain or distressed. She put her hand over his as it spanned her rib cage.
What he did then shocked her to her toes, as he bent close and pressed his lips to the scar. A quaking started deep inside. It spread out and collapsed her like a house of cards as he straightened and sat back on his heels. She threw her arms around his neck and fell against him, shaking and clinging to him as if he were the only stable thing in the world.
And she was afraid. She was very much afraid that it might be true.
“What is it?” he asked. That rough rich voice of his was throttled down to a quiet murmur. He hugged her tight and rocked her. “I thought things were better now.”
She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “You listen to me,” she said. She pulled back, grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him. It was like trying to shake a Mack truck: quite patently impossible. “Please don’t argue with me, threaten, posture or deflect. Just listen to me, Tiago.”
He frowned. “I’m listening.”
“Carling hates you. I don’t understand it or know why. She didn’t say. Maybe you know?” She paused, and he shrugged, his expression blank. “Okay, we’ll put the why aside for now. But she does. She hates you. I could see it when I talked to her. I think she would love to find an excuse to kill you.”
His eyebrows rose. “She might try,” he said.
She wanted to smack him, but the problem was she didn’t think Tiago saw his attitude as posturing. “Yes,” she said with emphasis. “She might if she thought she could get away with it, but I’m sure she doesn’t want to make an enemy of Dragos.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’m quite sure of that.”
She stuck her stiffened finger under his nose. “Don’t laugh,” she ordered. “This is not a laughing matter.”
His face straightened, but the smile remained a lazy ghost in his eyes. “Yes, your bossiness,” he said. He grabbed her finger before she could jerk it back and kissed the tip of it. “No arguing, threatening, posturing, deflecting or laughing.”
“You’re not taking me seriously.” Her eyes burned and a leaden rock settled in her chest. She looked down.
His big hands settled on her shoulders. “Hey,” he said. The laughter had vanished from his quiet voice. “Look at me.”
She refused. He bent his head to try to catch her gaze. She ducked her head further.
He sighed and rested his cheek on top of her head since it was the only thing she would let him reach. “Faerie, I’m sorry. I am taking you seriously, I swear it.”
She pulled back and met his gaze, which had sobered. The skin across her cheekbones felt too tight. She said through stiff lips, “Carling really scared me, Tiago. Not for my sake, but for yours. She’s Powerful, and she’s dangerous, and for whatever reason, she would kill you if she could. I think there were only two things that held her back from trying earlier. One of them was Dragos. The other is she wants to build an alliance with me. Those feel like pretty flimsy protections to me.”
He stroked her cheek with the ball of his thumb. He thought of the stark fear in her face and the suicidal leap she had made toward him that had almost made his heart stop. The impulse to rage at her for taking such an insane risk stormed through him, but she still looked so pale and had been through so much. He throttled back the storm.
“I understand,” he said. “Forewarned is forearmed. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Those huge gray eyes of hers searched his face. “Don’t take unnecessary chances,” she said. “Don’t threaten her.”
He could drown in those gorgeous eyes. Maybe he already had. Maybe this was what death was like, this beautiful torturous emotion. He tilted her back until he had her draped over his arm. He caressed the lovely, fragile white flower-stalk of her neck.
“I will do whatever I have to do to keep you safe,” he said. He bent to press his lips to the pulse that fluttered at the base of her neck. He would lie, cheat, steal, murder. Break vows, drop friendships, abandon responsibilities. Start wars or end them. “Whatever I have to.”
She knotted her small fists in his shirt. He loved it when she did that. He wondered if she realized how possessive the gesture was. Somehow he thought not. “Damn it, Tiago,” she whispered. “You will not take unnecessary risks.”
“You forget, my love,” he said in a gentle voice. He had been a god of war, quick to wrath and violence. Gentleness was an exoticism that bloomed only in her presence. “I don’t take orders either.”
My love. He couldn’t really mean that. Could he? It was just a term of endearment . . .
Then Tiago caressed her neck with his mouth, and Niniane lost herself in shocked voluptuousness.