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.
She instinctively flexed as she searched for some stable point of reference. Her feet were on the floor, but he had her bent backward so far, he supported her full weight on one arm that he propped on the seat of the armchair behind her. He nuzzled at her neck then took a small piece of the tender skin between his teeth and sucked at it. The resulting pleasure was so piercing it pulsed down the length of her torso and centered in the soft vulnerable flesh between her legs. He was a master of the lightning that whipped down her body, that jumped along her nerves like a live wire, that awakened sensual urges she had not felt in far too long and stirred emotions she had never felt before.