17. GODRIC

My single syllable ricochets off the cavern’s crystalline walls.

As it vibrates within their ancient magic like a gong of doom, her gaze clings to mine, unreadable for the first time.

It makes me wonder if I’ve succeeded in deterring her. Surely I have. I’ve infused my response with the threat that had brought every kind of Supernatural to their proverbial knees.

My hopes crash and burn as a devious grin widens those lips I regret tasting like I never regretted anything before.

She adds a scoff and a disparaging wave of her hand for good measure. “You’re full of shit. I bet you’re threatening me because you’re feeling threatened yourself. The question here is why.”

She starts to circle me, as if she’d find the answer written over me. I bet it is.

Stopping when she faces me again, her gaze licks me up and down, until I want to tear my clothes off and have that inflammatory tongue all over me instead.

It does come out to lick her lips as if they’re dry with the same need. “Is it the Null business? Is that what you were afraid the Ceremony would reveal? Is this why you never wanted to touch me, and now don’t want to kiss me again? You’re afraid I’d siphon your powers? Or even swallow you whole?”

With those last words, I see her on her knees before me. I can almost feel those hands burning around my engorged shaft, those maddening lips spreading wide to take in the crown. I see those endless eye that I’m always drowning in looking up at me, hooded with arousal as I feed her my cock, then streaming with distress and greed for more, for everything, as I choke her on it.

It lurches so violently, it would have torn any other fabric.

Bloody fuck. I can’t walk around constantly hard and aching like this, must desensitize my senses to her provocation. To her.

I already know that’s an impossibility, and must keep disguising my hard-on.

But there’s no Glamoring away the suffering.

Since ordering her, and trying to scare her didn’t work, trying to reason with her is my last resort.

Which means I have none left.

For this, for cornering me, I want to punish her until she writhes and weeps and pleads.

The one thing holding me back is that I suspect that, like Asmodeus, it’s what she’s trying to push me to do. Unlike with him, I want to do it. I crave her suffering and tears and screams.

But I know if I start, I will be unable to stop. Ever again.

“You will stop this, White,” I grit as the charge of frustration, sexual and every other kind, escapes my control. It bleeds out from my eyes, my every pore. I barely stop the storm of tuquh from snapping out to cage her. Because I know she relishes it. “And you will get out of here. I don’t want to see you again until you decide to heed my warning, and are ready to resume our training.”

“Oh, I’m ready. For anything. As long as it’s with you.”

“Get. Out. Now.”

“Chill, my Godawful Guru. I will, as soon as you answer my questions.”

My mind blanks with the images of devouring those reckless lips bloody, of ripping her out of her uniform, tossing her on the altar, and fucking her within an inch of her life.

Giving neither myself the chance to do something that irrevocable, or her to say anything more to push me to it, I materialize the leash around her neck.

And damn it all to the deepest circle of Hell, her eyes only spark with challenge, and worse, with—eagerness. She does want this, and anything at all with me.

The reckless, irresistible fool.

But I have to resist, until I’ve contained my upheaval, and my shackles are back in place. I must keep her away until I think the developments through, and come up with a game plan.

But the temptress is gazing up at me with a hunger as bottomless as the void within her. Then she makes it worse, taking hold of the leash, even when it sizzles its repellent magic through her flesh. Her face twists with pained pleasure as she pulls, with all her strength. It’s considerable now, and will only keep growing.

It’s nothing compared to mine, and certainly not why I feel my soul almost catapult out of my body. It’s her call, her lure. Her power over me. It’s all intensifying by the second.

The first time I felt this mutual pull, I couldn’t have imagined it would one day be this inexorable. Now I know.

If I don’t do something drastic, it would one day be absolute.

I can’t let this happen.

She has almost closed the gap I need to keep between us. I’m so tempted to let her, to just give in. I almost do.

In the last second before she plasters herself against me again, I envelop her in my Stasis Grace.

The moment she realizes she can’t move, her tantalizing gaze becomes chagrined. Good. I need her angry and hating me. I can deal with anything but her desire.

Before she can figure out that she can fight off my power, I sauruh her all the way out of Jegudiel House.

At the main door, I release her. I should walk away without a word, but feel compelled to deliver a parting jab.

I look over my shoulder with the calm cruelty that makes both angels and demons dread me, that makes even my family wary of me. “If you don’t want the leash back in public, all the time, if you don’t want to be dragged on your belly around the Academy, at your fellow cadets’ feet, you’ll—behave.”

The infuriating bane has the gall to laugh. That laugh that sounds like the purest crystal bells strummed by the loving fingers of Heaven’s breeze.

“But I never learned how to—behave.” Her gaze grows cheeky and goading all at once. “Guess you’ll just have to teach me.”

I purse my lips against the temptation to grind my teeth, or every more ridiculously, smile. “The leash will let you know when I’m ready to see you again.”

I turn and walk away. When I should take off, and not give her the chance to retaliate. As she always does.

“Hey, Angelhole.”

Her challenge lodges in my back, more effective at immobilizing me than those Infernal spears that once impaled me to a Celestial matrix, for examination, for programming.

Her soft drawl nears me again, sending my every cell rioting. “It was you who insisted I trek all the way here to meet you.”

It’s only then that I remember. I did order her to come ...

My jaw locks with the explosion of vivid images, complete with scents and sensations.

This is getting worse by the minute. Not only have I forgotten what I told her, but one common word triggered an immersive experience I can’t seem to stop. One filled with all the things I’d do to her; filthy, perverted things as I possess her, toy with her, drive her to desperation, destroy her—before I order her to come. Force her to. Over and over.

After what happened last night, I need some catastrophe to take my mind off her. Before I unleash myself on her, give her far more than even her bottomless greed can handle. Make her regret pushing me.

Good thing I have a couple on my hands. Also because of her.

“So—what happened since then to make you change your mind? You chickening out?”

In spite of the war zone within my body and psyche, I turn to her. My treacherous lips pull, and I let the unfeeling bastard that I am answer her. “You should be on your knees praying that I am.”

Her gaze sweeps me in a blaze of lust, settling on my feet, where I want her. Where her eyes tell me she wants to be.

Her lips tug in mischief as her gaze rises, but doesn’t meet mine. It stops on my left cheek, then my right.

As I’m wondering what she’s looking at, she licks her lips and her gaze slams back into mine. “I’m betting you are. Maybe you really are afraid of me.”

She’s becoming a virtuoso at pushing the buttons she’s created inside me, and my feet move without my volition.

Once I’m a breath away, she shudders.

I almost do, too, when the scorching wave of her pheromones, those tailored to inflame me, flood me as I lower my lips to her ear. “If only this were true. Since it isn’t, stay away from me until I summon you again. When I do, keep your hands and provocation to yourself. Meanwhile, don’t discuss this “Null business” with anyone in any way, starting with your Unitas.”

As I pull away, she exclaims, “So I’m really a Null? Is that why you once said I’m a Nothing? If so, why didn’t you tell me all along?”

“Because I suspect that’s not all that you are.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Give me a straight answer for once, you theatrical son-of-an-archangel.”

“A straight answer where you’re concerned is an impossibility. You didn’t think it would be that simple, did you?”

“So it’s worse?”

“There’s always something worse with you.”

“There’s something worse than a Null? That’s why you were so quick to back up Astaroth’s opinion? It was the lesser-evil verdict you hoped for? Or was it something you didn’t think of, but still thought it better than your theories?”

The pleasure I take in her barrage of questions is positively perverse. I’m beginning to suspect I wouldn’t give her answers, even if I had definitive ones, just to have her inundate me with them.

It’s unfeasible what I’ve come to crave from her.

I allow myself to tumble into the well of her curiosity and fervor as I smile, an action I always despised from others. I never imagined I’d have cause to succumb to the preposterous practice, until her. She even made me laugh on occasion. It further proves the enormity of her threat.

My only consolation is that I have an equally brutal and absolute effect on her.

Though that makes our dynamic even more volatile, and predicts a more devastating outcome, I still can’t help the satisfaction. The dichotomy is undermining my rationality, yet I can’t help reveling in her obsession, in her torment.

My grin widens, and her expression and posture wobble under its brunt. “Stash those questions into your void, White, until I’m ready to answer them. Now get out of my hair. Do try to comb yours when it’s your turn to come before the Congress. And for the love of your Sarah, follow my orders for once and say or do nothing. Disobey me, and you’ll only make our situation even more precarious.”

She bats those lashes at me. Curled like her hair, their every flutter feels like a caress to my cock. “Our situation?”

Willing my wings to snap out with enough force to make her stumble back, I turn, ending this encounter before she drags me in directions I never intended, and can’t control.

The damned thorn in my soul coos—coos—as she shadows me. “That’s right, Chicken Wings. Run and hide from the Worse-Than-A-Null. I’ll go get some answers from more accommodating sources. Lorcan is always happy to help. But I bet Gideon is even better. He’s very knowledgeable. And oh, so obliging.”

I don’t rise to her bait this time. But I do see myself dragging her by those wild tresses over my knee, and spanking her to a few screeching orgasms. Right before I search out Gideon, and rend him limb from limb.

Instead, I turn, and shove out my natuq, pushing her away. “And by the way, that extra kale? You’re having it for every meal, for two months.”

She catches herself, but instead of looking annoyed or angry, she’s grinning from ear to ear. Then she opens her mouth, and makes the weirdest sound.

For long moments, I’m unable to credit it.

She just—clucked.

She does it again, louder and longer this time. “Bakbakaaaak.”

I stand there, frozen, watching her turn and dance—dance—away to the rhythm of the raucous song she just improvised.

I once told her she stymies me. Now I realize I knew nothing of the feeling. This is what being stymied feels like.

With her on my mind and in my blood, I’m starting to suspect it is the new state of my existence.