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“You left that part out when you told me that bodies do not need to be burned for their souls to leave them.”
“I didn’t think it was something you needed to know.” His attention dropped and lingered where my fingers toyed with my hair.
I drifted closer. “Do you need me…” His gaze flew to mine. “To retrieve something for you to write with?”
“I have what I need.”
“Is it invisible?”
“No. I haven’t summoned it yet.” He lifted his hand. A slender, shimmering swirl of silver-white energy appeared, and a second later, a thin black stylus lay in his once-empty palm.
My lips parted. “Did you…just summon a stylus from thin air?”
“I did.”
That was somehow more mystifying than watching him conjure Odin from his cuff. “What about ink?”
“The names of the dead are not written in ink. They’re written in blood.”
“Your blood?”
Nyktos nodded.
My lip curled as he lowered the stylus to the bound parchment, and crimson appeared as he began to write. “Does it hurt?”
Nyktos shook his head.
I came even closer, stopping at the edge of his desk. I watched him in silence. He wrote name after name in neat, flowing lines of red until he turned the page and began to fill that one, too. “Your penmanship is beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He filled another page.
Then a third.
“How…how do you choose who dies?”
“I don’t.” Another name. “The names come to me as I write.”
I leaned my hip against the desk, curling my leg just enough that the panels of the gown parted, revealing my leg from the calf to just above the knee. “What if you make a mistake?”
He stopped writing, his gaze slowly sliding up the length of my exposed leg.
“What if you’re making names up and don’t realize it?” I asked as I untwisted the strands of my hair. “Or what if you misspell a name?”
“I don’t make mistakes.”
“Ever?”
“Not with this. In other things?” he muttered, the edges of his fangs dragging over his lower lip as his gaze lingered on the curve of my hip. “Far too often.”
“Really?”
“I can think of a few right now.”
“Like what?” I asked, knowing I was being a brat and thoroughly enjoying myself.
“Like not having Nektas take you with him when he left.” He returned to writing. “He could’ve put you down for a nap. I’m sure Jadis and Reaver would’ve enjoyed the company.”
I pressed my lips together to stop from laughing. “That was rude.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.” I watched him write several more names. Seconds ticked into minutes. Good gods, how many would die today? “Perhaps I should’ve left with Nektas. I wonder if he would’ve…enjoyed putting me down for a nap. He did seem to like my gown.”
That got his attention.
The stylus stopped moving. His chin lifted, and thundercloud eyes pierced with lightning met mine.
Very purposefully, I placed my hands on his desk and leaned forward. The slight bend of the waist was enough to test the limits of the gown.
Nyktos’s eyes lowered. The stylus vanished from his palm. I hoped that meant he was finished.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Am I being distracting?”
“You don’t sound sorry at all.” The line of his jaw flexed as he slowly drew his gaze to mine. “And you know exactly what you’re doing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re purposely being distracting.”
“I would never.”
“And seductive.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked, blinking wide eyes.
“Your breasts are inches from my face, Sera.” His gaze dropped and then returned to mine. “I don’t think. I know. And it’s not going to work.”
“Your failure to keep your eyes from straying to inappropriate places is not a reflection on my actions,” I told him, tipping my head and letting my hair fall forward onto his hand. “But if I were trying to seduce you, Your Highness, it would most definitely work.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t think.” I smiled then, bright and wide. “I know.”
That muscle began to tick in his jaw. “Well, you would know how to be successful in that endeavor, wouldn’t you?”
“Ouch.” My fingers pressed into the smooth surface of the desk. I’d most definitely opened the door and walked right into that comment.
“Did that offend you?” Those wisps in his eyes swirled.
“Not really. It’s true,” I said, glancing down. “I know all the ways to…” My eyes narrowed on the book. I frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it not odd that so many with the same exact name died today?”
Nyktos said nothing.
A grin tugged at my lips. “You were pretending to still be writing names, weren’t you?”
“I thought you’d realize that I was busy and decide to be less distracting,” he told me. “Obviously, that didn’t work.”
Losing the battle against a smile, I let out a throaty laugh. “Maybe I will find someone else to distract,” I taunted, pushing off the desk.
I didn’t make it far.
His hand snapped out, closing around the nape of my neck. My breath caught as my gaze locked with his. “I want to make one thing perfectly clear, Seraphena.”
The pressure he used was slight, only enough to force me to place my hands on the desk as I bent until we were at eye level, our mouths inches apart. My pulse skittered recklessly. His hold wasn’t painful. I could slip out of it if I wanted to, but I didn’t. I’d wanted his attention, and now I had it.
“As long as you’re my Consort,” he said, his tone deceptively soft, “you will be very selective about how you spend your time with others.”
“I assume when you reference how I spend time with someone, you’re speaking of what typically comes after the act of seduction?”
The Book of the Dead slammed shut and slid across his desk. Neither of his hands had moved. “You know exactly what I’m speaking of.”
“Then I’m confused,” I said in the little space between us. “You said I was to be your Consort in title only.”
His gaze dropped again, just for a brief second, but I knew where he looked. “I did.”
The breath I inhaled was all him. My blood heated and my skin flushed. “Then what of my needs?”
“Your needs?” he repeated, his voice smoothing to a decadent drawl that I wasn’t even sure he was aware of.
“Intimacies. Touching. Skin-to-skin contact. Sex. Fuc—”
“I think I get it.”
“So, what of them?”
He curled his arm, and it stretched me even farther. There was a really good chance my breasts would exit the gown. His head tilted. It was only a slight move, but it lined up our mouths perfectly. If either of us leaned forward an inch or two, our lips would meet. “I’m sure you can resist those desires or handle them yourself.”
“Because you watched me do it.” I wet my lips. Nyktos said nothing, his gaze now on my mouth. “You watched me last night. You touched me,” I whispered, feeling a faint tremor in the hand on the back of my neck. “I felt you. Inside me. That was highly inappropriate of you.”
“More inappropriate than you fucking your fingers while you knew I was watching?”
The breath I took went nowhere as liquid heat flooded my veins. The way he said “fucking” conjured images of silk sheets and tangled limbs. “What would’ve been more inappropriate was if you hadn’t taken care of it, and I had to do it myself.”
His nostrils flared.
“Why did you come to my bedchamber last night?”
“Arm’s reach,” he murmured. “Remember?”
“I remember, but was it truly that? Or did you sense my need? My want? Of you.” I inched forward, half-expecting him to retreat. He didn’t. When I spoke, my lips brushed the corner of his, and I felt a faint zap of static. “I was thinking of you when I fucked my fingers. Imagining that it was your touch—before I even knew you were in the chamber.”
“Sera,” he warned—or begged. It sounded like both.
“Just thought you should know.” I drew back, stilling when his molten silver eyes locked onto mine. “I can take care of my desires, but that only goes so far.”