Chapter Seventeen

Cassandra

Cass awoke in the insanely large bed. Her phone read 8:00 a.m. She must’ve passed out, which meant he’d brought her to bed. She glanced at the bottom of the mattress, where Zero’s warm lump hogged the blanket. Had Qadaire carried them both?

Of course he had. He was gentle and caring, and so insanely sweet. It was impossible, the way he was sex incarnate one moment and a nerdy sweetheart the next.

At some point during the night, she’d maneuvered the extra pillow between her knees. Why she hadn’t brought her knee pillow in the first place was beyond her. Her mind filled with images of Q’s knowing smile as he sent magic dancing on her hand. The hunger in his granite gaze. The feverish way he ate her pussy as though it were full of liquid gold. She squeezed her eyes shut and jerked her hips, picturing the way he’d humped the shit out of the bench. She pictured him doing that between her legs.

Let go. It’s only me and you.Let go.

She fisted the sheets, imagining his soft feathers between her fingers. His thumb somehow vibrating against her clit. She squeezed the pillow between her thighs, curling her legs. With a soft moan, she reached down to stroke her swollen clit. The memory of Qadaire bringing his slick-covered fingers to his mouth, sucking them dry like a man starved, made her toes curl. She straightened her arm and rode the fuck out of her fingers and the pillow until she caught her release.

It was nothing like when she was with him, but it was enough to dull the hollow ache inside her chest.

Cass hummed to herself as she rose with a stretch, a little smile resting easily on her face. She glanced at Zero’s sleeping form and that smile dissipated.

She scratched behind his ears until he opened droopy eyes, his tail twitching but not wagging.

“You’re not feeling so good, are you, buddy?” Tears pricked as the words tumbled out. “I need to hurry up, don’t I?”

She rose and checked her phone. Beside it was a gorgeous, expensive-looking hair piece. She ran her fingers over the studded jewels, all shiny and freshly polished. He’d left it for her. A splotch of numbness in her heart thawed. Not only was he monstrously attractive, but he was as precious as the stones set in the metal.

She took a shower and got dressed. She left her hair down and slid the pretty accessory in. Zero remained on the end of the bed, unmoved. She picked him up—holy shit, how did Qadaire make it look so easy?—and carried him all the way down to a chair in the lab.

Qadaire turned toward her, and her heart sank right down to her gut. She threw her hair up in a sloppy bun, her hands snagging on his gift, and rolled up her sleeves.

“What? What is it?” She shoved past him to look at the samples. “Oh, shit.”

“The original strain reacts perfectly.” He gestured to an all clear sample. “But the variant was wildly different than my calculations. It rejected the original and has fought off all of my other potions.”

“What about this?” She tapped on the chalkboard.

“No.”

“What if we . . .” She scribbled an equation. “Hmm?”

“No.” He gestured to a group of samples.

“Well, if you’ve thought of everything, then why am I here?”

Qadaire’s shoulder twitched back. She grumbled an apology and tossed the chalk harshly onto the ridge. The top of her mouth was suddenly itchy. She smacked her slick palms against both of her thighs in turn and paced back around the table to check each of the samples under the microscope.

Then it came to her.

“The wolves around here. Do they always eat your prey when you’re done?”

“Often. Why?”

“Your venom! The wolves are exposed to it, and they don’t catch X-3. Could we extract only the healing agent?”

Qadaire was in front of her in a blur of gray and black, the energy around him radiating with anger. His top hands were fisted and his bottom left gripped the table with white knuckles, pointing his right index finger on the tabletop so strenuously that it appeared bent at the knuckle.

“You would have me experiment on animals like the mad king?”

“Obviously not!” She scoffed. “We would study it. Synthesize it. Test it in a controlled environment!”

He released the table and took a few steps back, his bottom arms crossing, his top two running roughly through his head feathers to tangle in his hair.

She tried to be patient while he ruminated. Tried to keep her cool. She really, really tried not to press the matter. But he was taking forever to decide on something that was so fucking obvious. Zero coughed.

“It’s nothing like what he made you do. If you’ve done all that, you can definitely use your venom for good, right? I mean, come on!” She gestured to Zero, who’d coughed himself into a fit.

If she’d thought he was angry before, he was a thousand times angrier now. She stubbornly stood by her hurtful words. Warmth crept up her neck as she held her ground against the powerful vampirewith more fists than any human man she might’ve pissed off in the past.

He didn’t hurt her. He stomped his taloned feet out the door, somehow retaining all the grace of an ancient being.

“Coward,” she muttered to herself. In her periphery, she saw him hesitate. Then he was gone.