Blood and Blade (Goddess with a Blade #6) - Lauren Dane Page 0,87
palm facing up. Mesmerized, she stood very still as he traced a fingertip over the lines. Breathed out a near moan when he brought that hand to his mouth and planted a kiss against her wrist and then the tips of her fingers.
He cut his gaze to her face, lingering on her mouth a moment. “This is understood too, is it not?”
“I understand that this chemistry and attraction exists. But the rest is not something I understand. It seems very large and unknowable.”
His grin sent a shiver of delight over her skin.
“We’ll figure it out. Remember, call my name and I’ll come.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rowan whistled at the end of the retelling of Genevieve’s afternoon. “You’ve had a busy day.”
“It was something else. I’ve lived a long time and nothing like this has ever happened to me. It’s amazing and terrifying all at once. I don’t want to belong to anyone or anything. It feels like this is dangerously close.”
“It sounds more like you’d belong to them and they belong to you. The freedom he offers sounds good. If you can trust that promise and I think you can. Not that I’d put lying and manipulation out of the running, but the Devils seem to take pride in their independence and their connection to their Trick.”
“I don’t know enough about them!” Genevieve said.
“You do. You will. You’ll keep learning and if you find something you can’t live with, you walk away. But what if this is exactly where you’re supposed to be? You said yourself you didn’t know much about salt witches and here you are, one of them. Now you can learn all sorts of new stuff. And be stronger. You’ll just have to be careful to keep your position as priestess separate from whatever you get going with Darius.”
“Like you keep Clive separate from your job as Hunter?”
“I do though!” Rowan told her friend. “It’s not always easy. Mainly because Clive is up in my business and tries to protect me from having to think or make decisions. So annoying. But it’s protectiveness because he loves me. On the other hand, he does not try to tell me how to be a Hunter. He especially doesn’t tell me how to be a Vessel. Mainly because he’s scared of Brigid I think. But that’s the heart of it, right? Clive and I are both alpha personalities. So there’s a lot of push and pull. But he respects my abilities. And my path. And I think Darius is most definitely an alpha personality and you are too, even if you pretend not to be until you want people to know. Make your limits super clear. When he rolls over them, smack him in the nose with a newspaper. Metaphorically of course. Next time he’ll do it more carefully.”
“He seems like he’d be a lot of trouble and a lot of work.”
“In my experience, those are the best kind of partners.”
“First things first. Figure out if I really actually want to be their priestess. Then I can think about Darius and what there might be between us. Before those things, we have a Faerie to look for.”
“I’m going to call the Keep. See if Theo or one of his people might have any information about the Fae we might find helpful.”
Rowan put her feet up while she waited for the call to connect. It was past sundown there so she’d at least get hold of someone who could help.
Nadir, one of Theo’s Five and the only one who spoke in public as the voice of The First, answered.
“Tell me everything you know about the Fae and I’ll send you some Fran’s caramels,” Rowan said.
“Bribery at its finest,” Nadir said. “The Fae. Hm. Let’s see.”
As it happened, Nadir knew quite a bit more than Rowan had expected and half an hour later, right before she was ready to hang up, she hit Nadir up for her opinion of the mixed Hunter teams.
“I can certainly see the use in such a thing. Though, to be honest, I am not entirely sure the Nation would support it in its current form with the Hunter Corp. as the organization heading it all up. Even if it would make your father happy to know you were always going out with a team.”
Rowan held her growl back. It was useless. Nadir was right. It made sense. It also made about a billion times more work for Rowan to have to imagine how such a thing could work.