Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,90
that’s both eager and anxious. I want to kiss him, but I’m also terrified of screwing this whole thing up.
Maybe it’s better if I don’t get too intimate with any of the fae men while my future is still so uncertain. But that doesn’t mean I can’t allow myself a little closeness, does it?
I swallow hard and lower my hands. Then, carefully and deliberately, I shift my body over on the sofa so I can lean my head against August’s shoulder.
He hesitates for a moment, and then he presses a whisper of a kiss to my forehead. His arm tucks around mine. A sense of peace I haven’t experienced since Whitt first announced that Tristan was coming wraps around me with the warmth emanating from his side.
In this moment, being nestled against him feels perfectly right. This is all I need, and I don’t want to risk it by experimenting with more.
“Do you want to keep playing, or are you chickening out in the face of my immense skills?” August asks, lightly teasing.
A smile crosses my lips. “No chickens here. Bring it on.”
After a couple more losses, I manage to beat him at a level, bringing our points to a near tie. “Maybe I’m the one who should be worried,” August jokes, nudging me with his elbow where I’m still leaning against him, and the door swings open.
Sylas looks in at us. For the first instant, he looks weary but contented, maybe expecting to find only August in here playing alone.
At the sight of me cuddled up to the other man, the fae lord’s jaw clenches and his unscarred eye blazes like it did when I told him about August guiding me in the pool. He barrels into the room with an aggressive energy so potent it seems to lift the dark waves of his hair with a rising wind. His voice is little more than a growl. “I told you—”
He’s looking at August, not at me, and August is already jerking away from me as if burned. Guilt stabs through me—and then something even sharper, a blaze of my own it takes me a second to recognize.
It’s anger. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be angry myself.
“Stop it!” I snap. My voice squeaks, but the reprimand is firm enough that Sylas actually does halt in his tracks.
I catch August’s hand and twine my fingers with his before meeting the fae lord’s eyes again. “He wasn’t hurting me. We were just sitting together. What’s wrong with that?”
Sylas’s gaze is still searing, but it’s dampened from a full-out inferno to a more subdued smolder. “He did more than that with you before,” he says.
“So what?” My pulse is rattling through my veins, so fast I’d almost think it’s going to burst free of my body, but all of a sudden I am so angry. I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite this furious in my life. About the way Sylas is acting right now, about how he ordered me shut away for so many days before. About all this time waiting to find out whether I’m even going to have any kind of life beyond the next full moon. About all the moons that passed before I came here, while I was tortured and bled by the whims of the fae.
I’ve been terrified and anguished and despairing and grieving, but whatever anger started to rise up before, I must have bottled it away. Now it’s overflowing, swelling through my chest and spilling from my mouth.
I cling onto the rush of power that reverberates through the anger. “You can force me to stay here and take my blood if you decide to, and I can’t do anything about that. But I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to either of you. So don’t treat me like I’m a toy for you to fight over.”
Sylas inhales slowly. The smolder retreats, although it’d be hard to say he looks happy about the situation. His shoulders come down too, his arms folding loosely over his chest. He eyes me for a moment as if waiting to see if anything else is going to burst out of me.
“That’s fair,” he says finally. “It wasn’t my intention to treat you that callously, and I apologize. Your affections are yours to do with as you see fit. If this is your choice, I—”
A growl of my own escapes me, and he’s so taken aback he shuts his mouth.
“I haven’t made any choice,” I say, more irritated than