Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,26
rubbed my forearms where the skin had been blistered last night but was now only faintly pink. “That kid wouldn’t have recovered. Pickle wouldn’t if I burned him badly enough.”
The hellhound shifter sucked in a breath. He started to pace the width of the walkway, his expression intent. “I don’t like it,” he said finally. “We have too much at stake to bring a destructive wild card into the mix.”
My back stiffened. “If you’re going to try to tell me to take a hike after all this—”
He held up his hand. “Cool your jets, Disaster. I pushed you into bringing this power out; I can take responsibility for that. And you still contribute more to the cause than I can dismiss. But before these unusual reactions take hold any further, I think we should see if you can get a handle on them so that you can use them to destroy our enemies and not yourself. For that, we need to understand them. Understand you and what you are. Do you know where you were supposedly born?”
That wasn’t the direction I’d expected this conversation to go. “I’m not sure. I was three when Luna escaped with me, and she refused to tell me very much—she didn’t want me going back there. I think she figured the hunters who murdered my parents might still be looking for me. But I remember a few things. We might be able to figure it out.”
“Good. Then we can add that to our list of goals alongside building our base of allies. There must be someone in that place who’d know more about this fae woman and your supposed parents, and therefore how you came to be. If we’re going to get answers, I have to imagine they start there.”
“Okay.” A tingle shot through me, both exhilarated and uneasy at the thought of digging into my history. Even if I got answers, that didn’t mean I was going to like them.
“I’m glad we’re agreed,” Omen said in a slightly wry tone. He’d actually been pretty… considerate about the whole thing. And that wasn’t a word I’d ever thought I’d associate with the hellhound shifter, at least not when it came to his attitude toward me. But we had been through a lot, hadn’t we? We’d found a pretty good rhythm for working together until my powers had started turning me into even more of a pyromaniac.
My gaze had drifted to his mouth: those perfect Cupid’s bow lips. The lips that had branded mine with a heat that still made my knees weak remembering it.
He was turning away to head back to the Everymobile. “Omen,” I said quickly. “About last night outside the club—”
His gaze shot back to me with a flash of orange fire that didn’t look at all welcoming. Maybe that’d been designed to cut me off, but he should know by now that keeping my mouth shut wasn’t a particular skill of mine.
“I take it you want to pretend it never happened,” I went on.
He spun the rest of the way to face me again. His eyes had settled back into their usual cool hue, but a heat wafted over me that I was pretty sure had come from his well-built body. If he wanted me to believe he had no emotions at all about our split-second encounter, he was being about as convincing as a dog drooling over a forbidden bone.
Except I wasn’t forbidden, definitely not where boning was concerned. So what exactly was the issue?
“Do you have any alternate suggestions?” he asked. “Because if you think you’re going to reel me in like you somehow did my associates, you can incinerate that idea. Even if anything did happen between us—which it won’t—it isn’t going to buy you any special favors.”
I blinked. “Hold on. Why would you figure I was looking for favors, special or otherwise?”
He shrugged. “You do seem to be making a habit of seducing some rather powerful shadowkind. Do you really need one more just for the hell of it?”
He was lucky I didn’t incinerate him for what he was implying. I glowered at him. “I didn’t kiss you—or do all the many things I’ve done with the others—for some kind of personal gain, unless you count the gaining of fine times between the sheets. It isn’t part of any plan. It just… happened. And I liked that it happened, so I didn’t see any reason to stop more happening when the occasion arose. This situation is already crazy