“I thought vampires couldn’t be awake during the day?” She shot an accusing glance his way as though she’d caught him in a lie. She was a cunning female. Using deflection to hide her own guilt.
He turned slowly to face her, his brow arched.
“I have to say, Mikhail, I’m curious as well.”
From over Michael’s shoulder Claire’s gaze met Ronan’s, and a reluctant smile crept onto her lips. What had they talked about while he slept? What bonds had they formed? He didn’t like the ease with which she bestowed her favor upon the other male. The quick expression of good humor that caused Michael’s body to warm and his cock to grow hard. A pang of jealousy shot through his chest and he rubbed through his shirt at the star-shaped scar that hovered over his heart. Ronan might have been his friend, but Michael couldn’t help the feral growl that boiled up his throat.
“Wait for me in the study, Ronan.” Michael’s eyes never left Claire’s, the shimmering golden depths evaporating everything around him.
“This concerns Claire, too,” Ronan remarked.
Michael didn’t bother to face his friend. If he did he might be tempted to tear out the other male’s throat. His tone chilled with each word: “Does it?”
Claire looked from Ronan to him and back, her brow puckered. She’d be wise to avert her gaze from the other male, especially when Michael’s emotions were so volatile. The Collective tugged at the threads of his memory. A primal, instinctual urge to take Claire upstairs, sink his teeth into her throat and his cock into her soft flesh, overriding any sense of decorum or his own self-imposed abstinence. He wanted to bite her. Drink from her. Fuck her until there was no doubt in her mind to whom she belonged. She would never look at another male again with even a hint of affection when he was done with her.
“You and I will discuss whatever business you have, Ronan. Alone.”
Claire took a step toward Michael. “There’s no way you’re going to have a conversation about me behind my back, buddy.” Claire poked her finger into his chest. He looked down at that slender digit and locked his jaw down tight. The pad of her finger rested on his scar, and the rumbling in his chest intensified to a snarl.
The pain from that damned scar was soul deep and Claire had just poked an already-agitated animal. She met his eyes with defiance and showed not an ounce of fear. Admirable. Michael held her gaze and drew on his power—power that, ironically, she’d helped to restore—and her hand dropped to her side, limp.
“Claire,” he intoned. “Sleep.”
Her eyes drifted shut and she crumpled like tissue paper into his arms.
“That’s one way to get a woman out of your hair,” Ronan quipped in his insufferably snarky way. “Really, Mikhail, could you be more high-handed?”#p#分页标题#e#
“In my study,” he instructed from between clenched teeth. “I’ll meet you there shortly.”
Ronan let out a long-suffering sigh and turned on a heel. “Suit yourself,” he said as he left the room. “But heed my warning, Mikhail: If you continue to treat her as a kept thing, she’ll flee her cage and slip right through your fingers. And if that happens, we might as well hand ourselves over to the Sortiari slayers. Or run the stakes through our hearts with our own hands.”
Quiet indignation simmered under the surface of Michael’s barely checked temper. High-handed? He was the reluctant king of an orphaned race whose future depended on the very fragile, very human, female in his arms. A female who could never truly be his mate. He had no choice but to be high-handed. And how he treated Claire was for her own protection. She might have seemed to be made of steel, but once the scope of her situation sank in her weak human psyche would crack. Ronan thought she would flee? Michael would hunt her to the ends of the earth.
He marched up the stairs to the second-story landing, passing the hallway lined with guest rooms. Whether she could be his mate or not, Claire belonged to him. He refused to put her anywhere but in his bed. No one ventured past the second story. Not even Alex. The third story of the house belonged to Michael alone. He’d freed himself from one prison only to entomb himself in another. It was dark at the top of the landing. Quiet. The re-creation of a century’s worth of hellish loneliness. Was it wrong to want to keep Claire for himself, a prisoner here just as surely as he was?
Did what either of them wanted matter in the larger scope of what was needed for the continuation of the race?
He set her on the mattress as though she were nothing more than a hollowed-out eggshell. Too delicate to suffer even the slightest mishandling. Her hair fanned out on the navy blue pillowcase like gold shimmering under deep water. Michael reached down to brush the stray locks from her face and Claire sighed, a sound so pure and sweet it caused his heart to clench in his chest.