Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,70

leisure, enjoying the poetry and the drama. Finding more depth in them than she’d ever been willing to see in me.

Should watching a woman so like her go through the same motions have rankled me? It didn’t. Instead, a strange, serene certainty washed over me.

Demi was merely going through the motions, just as her grandmother had been. Neither of them had ever really passionately declared a challenge to combat or plotted the demise of unspeakable enemies or bantered with scurrilous rogues. I’d fallen for the roles Danae had admired, but she’d only been playing at them.

Sorsha was every bit the fierce and unshakeable woman contained in those roles—and more. The love that had grown in me in her presence ran right down to my core, as true as anything. She was as tangled in my being now as the roots of that lemon tree were with the earth.

And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Whatever splinter had remained from the follies of times past, it crumbled away with that understanding. I drew back from the wall without a moment’s hesitation and returned to the motorcycle.

It wasn’t hard to find my companions, even though they’d driven right through Athens down to the harbor. When I reached that area, I opened my supernatural senses to the energy I’d recognize as Sorsha’s—not pushing hard enough to get more than a taste, just enough to direct me.

Long ago, I’d let the scraps of desire I’d read in one woman’s mind convince me that if I only told her how much more I’d wanted, she’d find the same longing in herself. Now I didn’t need to scour my love’s soul for an answering emotion. I had a woman who offered up her affection with every word and gesture she directed my way.

The Everymobile was parked outside a closed fish shop. Its tour bus guise was thrown off a little by the tinsel it’d decided to sprout along the edges of the roof, which wavered up and down even without a breeze to carry it. It was definitely for the best that we hadn’t braved another trip to the rifts. It might have come out decked with a full set of holiday lights.

I left the motorcycle around back and traveled in through the shadows, only stepping out by Sorsha’s door. I could tell she was inside the bedroom, but it gave me an inexplicable pleasure to honor her privacy with the small gesture of knocking. “I’ve returned with all my parts intact, Miss Blaze.”

“I should hope so,” she said dryly, but when I slipped inside, I found her smiling. She looked me up and down as if confirming that claim for herself and gave my hair a fond ruffle. Her hand lingered over one of my horns in a way that never failed to send a thrill through me before it dropped to her side. “You look happy. Was she everything you expected?”

“She was exactly what she should have been, which was nothing I have any interest in anymore. I’d have had an awfully dull time of it if she’d been open to my full range of charms after all.”

I winked at Sorsha, and she laughed, but maybe the remark rubbed up against that thread of jealousy a little too closely. Just for an instant, flames coursed up over her hands, nearly translucent but hazy with heat. They vanished so quickly, with no change in her expression, that I wasn’t sure she’d even noticed her power had snuck out.

I took hold of the hem of her shirt and tugged her to me, tilting my face so my forehead rested against hers. Our mortal exuded so much strength and fire it was easy to forget she had her own vulnerabilities. She hadn’t asked me this, and she shouldn’t need to. It was a pleasure and an honor to say it for its own sake.

“In case I wasn’t clear enough earlier, there’s no one I need or want other than you.”

The corners of her lips curled upward again, and she met my kiss with that smile. But I knew even as I enjoyed the moment that it wasn’t enough. She had worries far beyond my part in her life.

She needed more than me… Maybe more than all four of us, despite all we could offer. She was a being of two worlds and uncertain abilities with possible apocalyptic potential.

All we could speak from was the shadowkind side. I could see that she got whatever other perspective she