Her lips curved. “Because I’m a good citizen of Merhaine?”
“Exactly. Now go get your purse.” He was always commanding her.
“Couldn’t you at least talk nicer to me?”
“Don’t see the point. You’ll just argue anyway, tell me how wrong I am about what I do and how I do it. Besides, if I’m not home in the next thirty minutes, I’ll be toast.”
Dawn was coming fast.
She huffed a sigh, slipped behind the long, metal counter, and retrieved her shoulder bag. “All right. Let’s go.”
***
Zephyr wished like hell Alesia wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, inside and out. For him, she was perfection with layered brown hair, neither dark nor light, just a soft shade between. She had large, green eyes, thick lashes. Her human genetics had softened her fae appearance so that her chin wasn’t as pointed as most of the fae he knew. The result somehow charmed him as no other woman ever had.
Her ears had rounded fae points that he’d enjoyed tonguing and she’d loved how he’d worked her ears. He’d never been with a woman who liked her ears sucked and tongued the way Alesia had.
She stood five-ten, a perfect armful. She wasn’t a skinny type either, but had a rounded ass he couldn’t get enough of and full breasts. At the same time, he could fit his hands around her small waist.
Damn all the elf lords, he missed the woman, ached for her, but she’d broken it off after their last big fight in which they’d called each other a few choice names, some of which fit. She could be opinionated as hell and he definitely, on occasion, fit the epithet of a stubborn, intractable male.
Still, nothing he’d said, no amount of apologies could eradicate the sore point between them that he killed wraith-pairs on the spot. She believed, with every ounce of her lovely self, that wraith-pairs should be captured, not killed, and afterward rehabilitated.
The first time he’d heard her opinion, he’d laughed, thinking she’d been joking. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d been so offended that she’d thrown a small but heavy ceramic dish at his head. Her apologies about the bump on his forehead had been long and regretful since she’d felt like such a hypocrite having used violence against him.
He’d healed within a minute, the wound completely disappearing, then set aside the argument by kissing her, working those sexy ears of hers, then making love to her.
Sweet Goddess, how he missed sexing her up, watching her body move beneath his, her moans and the final cries of ecstasy. She always sounded like a hunting bird in flight when she came, and he’d loved it.
Now he served essentially as her bodyguard, escorting her home last thing before dawn, night after night. He had to know she was safe. He couldn’t sleep otherwise. She didn’t like that he looked after her in this way and was perpetually mad at him. But as long as she didn’t look to her own safety, in a part of Merhaine where wraith-pairs hunted more heavily than any other part of the realm, he’d fly her the hell home at dawn.
More than once, he’d almost talked her into another round in the bedroom, but she kept steeling herself against him. She held rigidly to her rehabilitation philosophy and for some reason, he couldn’t get her to see that every time he fought and prevailed over yet another wraith-pair that he was saving dozens, maybe even hundreds of innocent realm lives.
Though she would concede that he had a point, she didn’t sway from her belief that wraith-pairs could and should be rehabilitated.
He thought her position foolish beyond words.
As she locked up the diner, he held out his arm to her.
This was the moment he loved best, when she slid her arm around his neck, climbed onto his booted foot and he pulled her tight against him. She smelled like berries soaked in red wine. She tasted like that, too. He ached to feed from her throat, something she’d never allowed him to do, but Goddess help him he wanted to know, just once, what it would feel like sucking from her vein, and what her blood would taste like.
A full-body shiver ripped through him.
“Not gonna happen, Zeph.” She understood him pretty well, too.
“I know. But you smell so good.”
“Did you call one of your doneuses?” She looked angry now, her brows pinched together. “Even I can sense that your blood-needs are at a critical level.”
“That’s not your concern.”
Because he’d reached mastyr status, he suffered from chronic blood-starvation that kept his nerves raw and his stomach cramping. He had to use a donor at least once a day, which kept him alive but didn’t do much to alleviate his symptoms. But like all mastyrs, he’d learned to live with his suffering as just one of the unfortunate results of gaining an unparalleled level of battling power.#p#分页标题#e#