Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Still chuckling, Silas climbed out of his car and circled around to open her door. Petra didn’t move. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t do anything at all except say, in a flat voice, “Nothing in this world could compel me to go into that house with you.”

“Baby.” He crouched down next to her and gently extracted the paper bag and empty bottle from her hands. Setting it down in the footwell, he grabbed her calves and guided her legs out until the tips of her little black boots touched his thighs. “How much do you want that information from Vanderpoel?”

She still wouldn’t look at him, but she couldn’t hide the way her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Not enough to do that.”

It took him a second to follow her train of thought. Silas blinked. “That’s not part of the deal.”

Petra’s lips went thin and bloodless. It took her a second to find the words, but when she did, they were brimming with venom. “Isn’t it? When you say things like that, what am I supposed to think? Apparently you have all the control here and now you’re saying you want to fuck me. That makes it part of the deal.”

Silas really had to think about that. Normally he never mixed sex with business, so it hadn’t occurred to him that he was doing exactly that. To him, fucking his little goddess and making a deal with Petra were two different things. Two straight lines running in the same direction, perhaps, but they never touched.

Something oily and uncomfortable squirmed in his gut the longer he looked at her rigid body language. She feels powerless.

He wanted that. He liked knowing he’d bent Glory’s favorite to his will, that she’d take food from his hand, that she might come begging on her knees for a taste of demon cock.

But, he realized with an unsettling jolt, he didn’t want it to be forced.

None of it would satisfy him unless she wanted to give him the power, because what attracted him to Petra was her power. He wanted her to hand it over to him because he valued it, her, so very much.

It didn’t appear she noticed that even at that moment, he was knelt before her. She didn’t know that he was asking, not taking, nor that by doing so, he was freely admitting how much power she had over him.

He thought she understood the game, but like with everything else involving her, Silas had apparently miscalculated.

Masks and secrets and more. Every time he thought he knew her, Petra revealed something new facet that threw him off balance.

“Look at me.”

When she stubbornly refused, he grabbed one of her ankles and gave it a good wiggle. “Petra, give me your eyes.”

Bless her, she did try to kick him then, which was exactly what he wanted. With her extended leg caught in his grip, she couldn’t help but glare at him, her brows turned down and her soft mouth pinched.

“You need to understand something,” he told her in a voice as close to gentle as he could get. “You are one of the very few people in this world who can say no to me.”

He understood why she looked at him like he’d grown a different set of horns, but he really didn’t appreciate it.

“I’ve been saying no!”

“I mean about everything other than our deal,” he amended. “That’s set in stone. Your bond is mine, Petra, and the methods I use to fulfill our bargain aren’t up for debate.”

“Then how?—”

He gave her ankle a squeeze. “Let me finish before you give me a dressing down, woman.”

The look she gave him could have peeled paint. He loved it.

It was hard work suppressing his grin when he continued, “Our deal is our deal, but it also means two things: first, that I need you alive, and second, that if I’m going to be stuck with you for the rest of my life, then you can’t hate me too much.”

He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her besides her bond and the deeply satisfying knowledge that she belonged to him alone, but hate wasn’t it.

“I get a thrill out of fuckin’ with you, but the only reason it’s fun is because you’re a powerful woman. You are a High Priestess. Every room you’re in, you shine so bright you blind everyone else. You’re a gloriana with the ability to wield fuckin’ light. You think I want you beaten down or backed into a corner, giving me whatever I want because you’re scared?”

Silas leaned into the passenger’s side of the car. Bracing his hands on either side of her thighs, he pressed his lips against the shell of her ear and breathed in the scent of her ridiculous glamoured hair. “Baby, the fun comes from knowing you want me to have the power. I’d like nothing more than to know for a fuckin’ fact that you are desperate for my cock. I want to know I own a goddess — body and soul.”

She began to breathe faster. He was desperate to see the look in her eyes, but he held himself there through will alone. Silas intended to settle something between them tonight, and though he hadn’t thought of this before, he realized it was vitally important they get this straight, too.

“If you don’t want it, I’ll never force you,” he promised.

The thought had never even crossed his mind. Everyone was capable of violence, but demons were particularly sensitive to sexual coercion. Ruts made things messy and often dangerous, so clans had to be extremely strict about sexual boundaries. Not to mention the fact that they damn near worshipped the very concept of matehood.

He couldn’t say he fit into much of clan life, but those things had made an impression on him. Silas doubted he’d ever be a mate, but he would never stoop to coercing a woman into something she didn’t want.

The thought of Petra — strong, stunning, powerful Petra — worrying that he might do that to her made that sick, oily feeling return with a vengeance.

He wasn’t sure he really meant it, but he tried to when he added, “You can call this thing between us off, Petra, if you really can’t believe I wouldn’t ask that of you. But if you go into that house with me, then there’s no backing out. This is the line. Once you cross it, you’re never getting rid of me.”

Truthfully, he wasn’t sure there was ever much of a chance of that, but if there was, then she needed to get as far from him as possible now.

He couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t chase her down, but he’d let her get a headstart first.

Silas pulled back enough to see her face and was annoyed anew at the sight of a stranger peering back at him. But he knew Petra. He knew his little goddess’s soul, even if he didn’t know her past. He could make out her in the oddly dark eyes, the expression that tightened those foreign features.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You can’t,” he answered simply. “I wouldn’t even trust me.”

He expected her to get angry at that, but she didn’t. Petra seemed to anticipate that answer and, perhaps sensing the honesty in it, only nodded. “No sex unless I say so explicitly, and I need something from you to make this feel equal.” After a thoughtful beat, she demanded, “Give me your name. Your real name.”

Gods, she’s magnificent.

People a thousand times more dangerous and powerful than her had killed for the knowledge she demanded so easily. No one had ever come close to figuring it out and he intended to keep it that way. Silas’s clan had nothing to do with what he’d made of his life. They were good people with kids and feelings and shit. He was a monster, but he protected and provided for his clan because they were his.

Giving Petra his name was like giving her the key to them.

She could use it against him. She could sell it to a hundred different people who wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter everyone in the little town they occupied. She would hold one of the very few precious things he guarded in the palm of her hand.

And, for reasons he didn’t truly understand, he wanted to give it to her.

Silas lifted her right hand to his lips. Pressing a kiss to the back of her hand, he murmured, “My name’s Silas Augustus Cuttcombe. It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

Petra let out a short breath. If she was surprised by his concession, she hid it behind an immediate and amusing burst of suspicion. “What do you expect in return for that?”

He didn’t pretend to hesitate. His witch was canny enough to know he’d never give something like that up for free because she wouldn’t.

“No more glamours.”

“I can’t walk around the city without being recognized,” she protested.

“You won’t be recognized.” He dug into his back pocket. It was awfully dark for her eyes, but she must have been able to see well enough because the moment he extracted the necklace from his pocket, she made an odd, squeaky sound and slapped her hand against her chest. She groped around, feeling for the chain that hung there.

“Is that my necklace?”

“A replica,” he assured her, without explaining that it was a much nicer necklace than the one she wore every day. Hers was gold plated . His was solid twenty-four karat.

Setting it and its long, delicate chain into her palm, he guided her to run her fingers over the flat side of Glory’s sun symbol. It was the side that would rest against her skin, and it was engraved with a hundred tiny sigils he’d carved with a jewelers drill.

“Wear this instead. I’ve personalized it to you. Every time you activate the glamour, it’ll create a different set of features so you’re even less likely to be recognized.”

Petra’s hand trembled under his. “Why would you do this? I thought you didn’t want me to wear glamours.”

“I don’t want you to wear glamours I can’t see through,” he corrected her. “And even though you have impressive skills for an amateur, yours can be wiped away by a careless napkin.” Or a demon’s seeking fingers. “This is much harder to remove.”

There was more to it than that, of course. A simple glamour charm would have done the trick, but he was never one for simplicity. She didn’t need to know what else he’d packed into the small pendant, though.

Petra tried to force the necklace back into his hand. “I can’t afford this.”

That was true. Unless she had several million dollars squared away, she couldn’t have afforded even half the work he’d put into the necklace. Imbuing objects with magic, even with sigilwork, took finely-honed skill and patience. It was just lucky for her that, after decades of secret research, he was an expert in that sort of thing.

“You aren’t paying for it,” he replied, annoyed that she’d turn down a gift. The animal in him didn’t like that at all. “Consider it an insurance policy to keep my investment safe.”

“I…” Her words died on her tongue. Rather than the angry silences she’d fallen into before, this one seemed genuinely baffled.

Silas clicked his tongue and, knelt there in the gravel driveway, helped her remove the original necklace. She was docile as he looped the long chain over her neck and only watched, wide-eyed, as he transferred it to himself.

Once it was in place against his chest, deliciously warmed by her body heat, he plucked the replica from her limp hand and did the same process for her.

“There,” he announced, exceedingly pleased now that everything was sorted. “C’mon.”

She was quiet as he helped her climb out of the car. With one hand tucked behind her back, he guided her toward the shack. The necklace bumped his breastbone with every step. He imagined it was an echo of her heartbeat, thumbing away in time with his own.

Beside him, looking lost in the dark, Petra whispered, “Thank you, Silas.”