“The magic feeds on negative emotion.” Naya’s voice was thick as his tongue flicked out, so hot against her throat.
“It does. I feel it rise up when I’m angry.”
“I guess that means I need to keep you happy.” Was it wrong that she wanted him to bite her? To sweep her up into that frenzy of sensation that caused all rational thought to take a vacation from her brain?
“If you want to keep me happy, don’t send your cousin away.”
Naya pulled away and studied his guileless expression. “You can’t be serious.”
“If I could meet this Paul now, I’d wring his neck for allowing you to hunt alone. Taking backup doesn’t prove that you’re weak, Naya. It shows that you’re smart. Only fools and characters in horror movies go it alone.”
She bristled at the implication in his words.
“Gods, but you’re a willful female.” Ronan stroked her hair and brushed his thumb along her temple. “I’m not saying that you’re foolish, either. Just promise me that you won’t make a move without having someone at your back.”
Naya sighed. “Whatever.”
“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Ronan took her by the hand and led her toward the bed. “Lie with me until the sun rises.”
Ronan was a male who expected nothing less than to be obeyed, and where he led she found herself helpless to not follow. Naya didn’t want this tenderness, the soft emotion that urged her to take down her walls. The tether that bound them drilled through her cold apathy, and despite her best efforts to keep him at bay, Ronan had wormed his way into not only her soul but also her heart.
She lay down on the bed, tucking her back against Ronan’s chest. He hooked one arm round her waist and rested his mouth near her temple. “Luz is telling your friend Santi that she’s afraid I’m going to use you as my own personal Slurpee,” he said with a gentle laugh.
“You can hear her?” Naya had assumed that all of Ronan’s senses were keen. Impressive.
“She thinks I’m using mind control on you.”
Leave it to Luz to jump to the worst conclusions. “Can you do that?”
He idly kissed her temple, the outer shell of her ear. “More or less. But I doubt it would work on you.”
Ronan was more powerful than she’d given him credit for. Vampires had their own magic, it seemed. Magic she couldn’t comprehend or understand. “Why don’t you think it would work?”
“You’re strong willed. Your magic is powerful. More so than mine.”
Naya’s chest swelled with emotion. For most of her life, she’d felt so weak. Her magic seemed paltry in comparison to the Bororo males who were stronger, their senses sharper. She’d wanted the ability to shift when she was a girl. Run through the woods with Joaquin and Santi. See the world through the jaguar’s eyes.
“I don’t feel powerful.” She felt like a slave. Trapped in a life she didn’t want to live and tired of blindly following orders that she’d begun to question. What scared her most about Ronan’s sudden presence in her life wasn’t the mystical tether that pulled at her soul or the way he evoked raw emotion and a magic she’d never known existed. It wasn’t the instant emotional connection or ease at which he put her. She understood the importance of mate bonds. Knew how they forged a male and female together. No, what truly terrified her was the glimpse of a life outside of everything she knew. A life that she’d never, ever be allowed to live.
“You are so powerful, Naya. The very essence of life.” Ronan’s voice became lazy and thick. “And I will tell you every day until you believe it.”
The arm holding her went limp as the first rays of sunlight peeked through the blinds. Naya disentangled herself from his embrace and took the comforter off the bed, draping it over the window as a safeguard to block any daylight from coming in. Her gaze wandered back to the male sleeping like the dead, his well-muscled frame taking up the bulk of her bed. So tall that his feet touched the footboard.
She crossed the room and leaned down over him, brushing his tawny locks from his forehead. “I’m going to fix you, Ronan,” she murmured against his skin. “I promise.”
CHAPTER
20
“Okay, what the fuck is going on? I know I told you to sow some oats, but I didn’t think you’d plow the field with so much gusto.”
Naya fixed Luz with a stern eye and placed her hands on her hips. She brought her finger to her lips and shushed her cousin as she eased the door closed behind her. Who knew how much vampires heard when they slept?