other. Call me a disaster all you want, but no one’s ever believed in me as much as you do.”
Another flicker of flame passed through Omen’s eyes. His hands balled at his sides, and his voice came out terse. “I believe you’re a fucking headache.”
“Nope. I’m not doing this. The bickering has been fun, but aren’t you getting tired of it? If we’re going back to practicing, then it’s with the understanding that I know you’re doing this to help me, because it matters to you that I come out of this mess okay.”
“You don’t get to announce how I feel.”
I gave him a wry smile. “I’ll agree to that rule if we also make one that you don’t get to pretend you’ve got no feelings at all.”
“Don’t go all Dr. Phil on me,” Omen snapped. When I didn’t respond, he took a swipe at my shoulder, knocking it just enough to make my body sway. “Where’s your fight, Disaster? Aren’t you always going on about all the incredible strength you’re holding back?”
“I don’t want to fight you. And frankly, I think it shows a lot more strength to own up to what you really want than to walk around with some tough-guy front.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than a front.” Omen took a jab at my other shoulder. “If you think I’m some kind of puppy dog, you’re sorely mistaken. Do I need to show you just how hellish I can be?”
“Better that than the Ice-Cold Bastard,” I said. “Who said I wanted a puppy dog anyway?”
“Then show you can take on the hound.”
He shoved me more roughly, his eyes flaring, his hair rumpling like it always did when his temper emerged. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of pushing back.
I raised my arms in a gesture of surrender instead, and that enraged him to the point of blazing. His fangs came out, the magma glow and lava darkness coursing over his skin.
With a full snarl, he slammed me back on the bed. His hands pinned my wrists to the mattress with a prick where one of his claws nicked my skin. He clamped his jaws around my throat. His fangs nicked my flesh with a sliver of pain. And all that dangerous, delicious heat flooded over me.
If he thought he could push me into giving him the fight he wanted instead of the fondness I’d been offering, he hadn’t seen quite enough.
“I trust you,” I said quietly. “Whether you want me to or not. You can’t scare me enough to make me run away.”
A growl reverberated up from Omen’s chest, transforming into a groan as it spilled across my throat. His body hovered over mine, his muscles tensed. Then his tongue swiped across the sensitive skin he’d been threatening, drawing a rush of pleasure with it.
My breath caught with a gasp taut with desire. I dared to raise my hand to that wild tawny hair—
And he wrenched his mouth from my neck to my mouth, claiming me with a kiss of scorching breath and searing tongue.
My fingernails scratched across his scalp. His fangs were still out, his hellhound heat radiating all across his otherwise mostly human form, but damn if that didn’t make the embrace that much more intoxicating.
I arched up toward him, the need to meld with that heat clanging through me like a fire alarm. Without breaking the kiss, Omen dragged me farther up the bed, his hips pushing between my thighs. The hottest part of him, long and hard, pressed between my legs, setting off a shock of bliss. I let out a very undignified whine.
There wasn’t anything dignified at all about the collision of our bodies. It was all savage fury. Our mouths crashed together again and again, a metallic tang creeping across my tongue where his fangs had scraped my lip. I tore at his shirt, and he flung it the rest of the way off so violently it smacked a china figurine off the dresser to smash on the floor.
More veins of orange glow blazed across his chest. When he lowered himself again, my shirt crackled with the raging heat. As the fabric charred and fell away like soot, he might have blistered the skin beneath it, but I instinctively called up my own fire to meet him. The flames of our beings danced together between us, searing away the rest of our clothes but licking against my flesh with only the most ecstatic of burns.
Apparently I could