Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,60

enjoy you letting loose, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking to hear.”

I elbowed Ruse, and he chuckled. Then he slipped his arm around me and tugged me to him, dipping his head so his lips brushed my temple as he spoke.

“You’ve accomplished a lot of impossible things in the last few months, Miss Blaze. You’ve conjured love in an incubus, desire in a devourer, gentleness in a wingéd warrior, and mercy—along with a few other things, it’s becoming clear—in a hellhound. Proving a riddling sphinx and some stuffy Highest bastards wrong will be the least of your accomplishments when you’re through.”

He spoke so confidently and with such affection that I almost believed him. Enough that even if he hadn’t melted my doubts, I could shove them far enough aside to tease my hand into his hair. “Suddenly I can think of a few things I’d like to accomplish right now.”

As if to punctuate that statement, a panel popped open on the ceiling above us, a plastic birdie on a spring swinging out. “Cuckoo!” it said cheerfully, like a demented clock. “Cuckoo!”

Poor Darlene. Ruse and I exchanged a glance and burst into laughter. With weirdly buoyed spirits, I drew him down with me on the bed, pulling his mouth to mine.

Here was hoping that if I soaked up all of his faith in me, I could make that certainty my own.

17

Sorsha

Ruse had only gotten in a few—incredibly delicious—kisses when Bow’s voice carried through the bedroom door. “Thorn! Good to see you again too.”

The incubus let out a stifled groan, teasing his lips from my jaw down my neck before raising his head. “Interrupted again. I look forward to the day when sphinx and Company alike have been tossed out with the trash so I can enjoy you at my leisure, but for now I think we’d better find out what the lunk has come back with.”

Every part of me except the heat pooled between my thighs agreed. I stole one more kiss for good measure, and then paused. “You know, if you ever need to feed, all you have to do is—”

Ruse held up his hand to stop me. His mouth flattened at an odd angle for a second before he recovered his usual smirk. “I have no problem speaking up. Trust me, you’ve kept me quite satisfied, my lovely thief.”

But would I always? A strange sensation ran through my chest, twinges of concern and jealousy clashing. I swallowed down the latter. Ruse was what he was, and I accepted that. I wouldn’t ask this man to starve just to indulge my human notions of fidelity. And really, who was I to fuss about fidelity in the first place, when I’d been canoodling with three other men right here in this RV?

“If I ever don’t—I mean, if you need more than one woman’s energies to keep you sated—I understand. Cubi kind have got to cubi and all that.”

Maybe I hadn’t shoved that jealousy down quite far enough. Despite my attempt at nonchalance, Ruse’s warm eyes softened as he took me in. He trailed his fingers down my cheek and drew me into a kiss so deep it took my breath away.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he murmured against my lips afterward. “But you don’t ever have to worry about that.”

Because I really was enough or because he’d be discreet enough that I’d never know? I guessed it didn’t make much difference either way.

“Good,” I said, and twined my fingers with his on our way out into the Everymobile’s main room.

I stepped out expecting to see both of our stalwart wingéd looming in the hallway, but it was only Thorn’s considerable bulk filling the space, no sign of Flint. While Thorn’s expression was often grim enough to send lesser creatures fleeing in terror, now his chiseled features held shades of pain and shame as well. My stomach twisted at the sight.

“—decided to stay with them and continue the search,” he was just saying to Omen. “But my first responsibility is to you—I wouldn’t be mortal-side at all if not for your mission.”

A crackle of flame rippled through me. I managed to hold it in as I marched over, but I couldn’t keep the searing sting out of my tone. “Those asshole wingéd tried to make you think you owed them more?”

Thorn’s head drooped like I’d only seen once before—after we’d first gotten Omen out of the Company prison, when the shifter had laid into him for not orchestrating that jailbreak sooner.