After Dark Read Free Page B

me.”
    Like hers, his gaze fell to where they were connected. He licked his lips, and his grip tightened just the way she liked. Then he released her as if she were on fire and once again increased the distance between them.
    “Do you understand?” His tone was hard and flat.
    What was the problem? He should be begging to touch her. She was a desirable Harpy, thank you very much. Her body was a work of art and her face total perfection. But for his benefit, she said, “Yeah, I understand. That doesn’t mean I’ll obey.” Her skin tingled, craving the return of his. Bad girl. Bad, bad girl. He’s a stupid warrior, more brawn than brains, and therefore not an appropriate plaything. Wait. Surely that thought hadn’t come from her. She loved men with more brawn than brains, right?
    A moment passed as he absorbed her words. “Are you not frightened of me?” His wings folded into his back, arcing over his shoulders.
    “No,” she said, raising a brow and doing her best to appear unaffected. “Should I be?”
    “Yes.”
    Well, then, he’d have to somehow grow the fiery claws of her father’s people. That was the only thing that scared her. Having been scratched as a child, having felt the acid-burn of fire spread through her entire body, having spent days writhing in agonizing, seemingly endless pain, she would do anything to avoid such an experience again.
    “Well, I’m still not. And now you’re starting to bore me.” She anchored her hands on her hips, glaring up at him. “I asked you a question but you never answered it. Why do you want me to be like you? So much so, that you brought me into the skies?”
    A muscle ticked below one of his eyes. “Because I am good and you are evil.”
    Another laugh escaped her. He frowned, and her laughter increased until tears were running from her eyes. When she quieted, she said, “Good job. You staved off the boredom.”
    His frown deepened. “I was not teasing you. I mean to keep you here forever and train you to be respectable.”
    “Golly gee—is that right? Is that what you’d say? How adorable are you? ‘I mean to keep you here forever and train you,’” she said in her best impersonation of him. There was no reason to fight about her eventual escape. She’d prove him wrong just as soon as she decided to leave. Right now, she was too intrigued. With her surroundings, she assured herself, and not the Sent One. The skies were not a place she’d ever thought to visit.
    His chin lifted a notch, but his eyes remained expressionless. “I am serious.”
    “I’m sure you are. But you’ll find that you can’t keep me anywhere I don’t want to be. And me? Respectable? Funny!”
    “We shall see.”
    His confidence might have unnerved her had she been less confident in her own abilities. As a Harpy, she could lift a semi as if it were no more significant than a pebble, could move faster than the human eye could see and had no problem slaying an unwelcome host.
    “Be honest,” she said. “You saw me and wanted a piece, right?”
    For the briefest of moments, horror blanketed his face. “No,” he croaked out, then cleared his throat and said more smoothly, “No.”
    Jerk! Why such horror at the thought of being with her? She was the one who should be horrified. He was clearly a do-gooder, more so than she’d realized. I am good and you are evil, he’d said. Ugh.
    “So tell me again why you want to change me. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t mess with perfection?”
    That muscle started ticking below his eye again. “You are a menace.”
    “Whatever, dude.” She liked to steal—so what. She could kill without blinking—again, so what. It wasn’t like she worked for the IRS or anything. “Where’s my sister, Kaia? She’s as much a menace as I am, I’m sure. So why don’t you want to change her?”
    “She is still in Alaska, wondering if you are buried inside an ice cave. And you are my only project at the moment.”
    Project?