She scowls at me, somehow angrier, then matter-of-factly announces, “Well, guess what, Jason Creed? I, Bailey Blackwood, reject you.”
I laugh.
This makes her even angrier. And it makes emotion swell up in me. Strange emotion that I’ve never experienced before.
“You’re not rejecting me, Bay,” I say, my voice coming out rough. “You’ve been in love with me since you were twelve years old.”
“Eight,” she corrects. “Maybe even six. But fuck you, Jason. I finally see you for who you are, and I want nothing to do with you.”
“We’ll see what happens when I pull you close to me, give you what you’ve been waiting for.”
More pink in her cheeks. And the even more intense scent of warm apples with a nuance that makes me smile wide.
“Fuckin’ fuck me. Bailey Blackwood’s wet for me again,” I say, pulling that sweet scent in, wanting to fucking bathe in it. “And now that I know you’re mine, I’m lookin’ forward to finally doing something about it.”
And I think her head is about to explode. Her head and my jeans.
Ignoring the daggers she’s trying to fire at me from her eyes, I take in a long, slow visual drink of her. The cleavage. That pouty mouth. All the shiny hair. The sultry librarian in eyeglasses who hasn’t got a clue how many boners get sprung for her every day. No, not me. Until now. Because I wouldn’t play with Grey’s sister. Not in a million years. But now she’s not only Grey’s sister. She’s mine.
I don’t even mind the daggers, actually, because she’s looking at me with all that fire.
I chuckle darkly and watch a swallow work down her throat. My gums itch, a weird sensation, and damn, do I ever want to taste her skin, sink my teeth into that creamy, pulsating spot by her collarbone.
She’s furious with me. And she’s very fucking attractive when she’s angry. Yeah, my mateisfucking pretty. Damn, but I’ve got my work cut out for me. But I like a challenge, which I don’toften get with the fairer sex, so I’m almost hoping she doesn’t give in too soon.
Footsteps.
I move to the bottom of the stairs.
The younger guy comes halfway down, extending a phone. “Go ahead. It’s your friend.”
“Jase?” Grey is on speaker on my phone.
“Grey!” I shout.
“Hey man,” he greets.
“Shit obviously went south. Bailey showed up and we were magicked unconscious and put in a Starling witch’s basement. They’re after those artifacts, of course, but said I had decoys. I don’t know why the fuck Erica put decoys in my bag while the Starling witch said the real deal is already in Romania, but–”
“We’ll talk about all that, bro. Later.”
I stop talking.
“Dani’s on the way to you,” Grey keeps going. “We’ll figure this out. Alta Starling has been reprimanded by her coven and swears no harm will come to you two. Hang tight, okay? How’s my sister? And how the fuck did she get tangled up in this?”
“She’s mine, Grey.”
“She’s…” He lets that hang.
“Smelled it two seconds before we were knocked out. Woke up restrained, then that witch put her hands on Bay, so I lost my shit. She threw some green ampule at me that knocked me out again.”
“The fuck?”
“Bailey’s okay. But all I can do to keep her safe is try to physically block her so I’m very fuckin’ not happy.” I flash her a look and she’s staring, wide-eyed. “but yeah… they used something to block me from shifting, green skinny flowers on a vine, restrained us both. Bailey fed me one of those breath strips Aphra made for our dead brother-in-law.”
“Pale green angels trumpet vines. Nightshade family,” Bailey calls out.
“I’ll be damned,” Grey says, sounding completely shocked.