might have sniped at him for that comment if he hadn’t said it with approval. “It comes naturally to me. And you really should go. Surely you have stuff to do, places to be, people to see.” Like Eleanor, Devon almost added. No, she wouldn’t mention that heifer, unable to trust that her jealousy wouldn’t seep into her words.
“I like it here. It smells of you.” He dipped his head close to her neck and inhaled deeply. “Your scent makes my mouth water.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think you’re charming, don’t you?”
“The charm comes and goes.”
Devon gave him an indignant huff. “Shouldn’t you be off chasing your tail or something?” Her stomach clenched as his mouth curled into a sensual, panty-dropping smile.
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
“What?”
“Making me want to bite you,” he replied, dropping his voice into bedroom territory. His gaze raked over her in a way that made her pulse spike. “Hmm, I’d like to mark all that pretty skin.”
“And your hound would like to rip it to shreds.”
“At one time, it happily would have skinned you alive. But it’s grown to tolerate you and your demon.”
Okay, that shocked her.
“I’d say your feline has probably grown to tolerate me just the same.”
“Well, it would no longer like to snack on your heart, but it probably also wouldn’t care if said heart abruptly stopped beating. Does that count as ‘tolerating’ you?”
“Yeah, it’s good enough.” Tanner eyed her soft curls, thinking they’d look good fanned over his pillow as he pounded into her. His cock, already hard and heavy, twitched at the visual.
As he inched a little closer to her, his gaze dropped to the chafe marks on her wrist. The sight made his teeth grind all over again. He took her hand and brushed his thumb over her palm. “If you’d been wearing my mark, the incantor wouldn’t have been so quick to take the job.”
Sipping her drink, she gave him a look that questioned his sanity. “You wouldn’t be able to mark me unless your demon considered me under its protection, which it doesn’t. It might have grown to ‘tolerate’ me, but it’s not going to give a flying fuck what happens to me.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
She snorted. “Our kinds hate each other. There’s no way your demon would offer its protection to a hellcat.”
“It’s pissed about what happened to you. It wants to avenge you.”
“Yeah,” she drawled, all skepticism. “Right.”
Tanner didn’t blame her for doubting him. “I can prove it.” He tightened his grip when she tried snatching her hand back. “If you really don’t believe me, where’s the harm in letting me try?”
Looking bored, she took another sip of her drink. “Even if it did work—which it absolutely would not—no one would buy that the mark was real. They’d think it was a tattoo.”
“A closer look would be enough to tell them that they’re wrong.” The mark would be nothing more than a small, innocuous-looking symbol in the center of her palm, but it would also glisten and smell of him—something no tattoo would do. Better still, it would glow whenever she was in danger and psychically alert him that she needed help, no matter how far apart they were. “You don’t need to worry that being marked would hurt. It might sting a little, but that’s all.”
“My demon would view any pain from you as an attack. It’d rise and retaliate.”
“No, it wouldn’t. It can sense that I won’t hurt you.” Tanner breezed his thumb over her palm again. “Tell me the truth, kitten, why does the idea of being marked by me bother you so much?”
“Who wouldn’t it bother? Hellhounds are insanely proprietary over whatever they mark, which is why Knox didn’t want you to leave one on Harper—she told me.”
He gave a slow nod. “And you don’t like possessiveness. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You feel that accepting my protection will be like surrendering to me in some sense. It won’t, kitten. It won’t be a show of weakness.” He gave her hand a little squeeze. “Come on, put your money where your mouth is; let me try to mark you.”
She heaved a sigh of sheer exasperation. “Why bother? You know it won’t work.”
“If you’re so convinced of that, let me try.”
“Will you leave if I do?”
“Sure.”
Sighing again, she shrugged and put down her mug. “Knock yourself out, I guess.” Devon almost snickered at the triumphant look on his face. God, he truly was delusional if he thought this would work.