imagine would happen to their eyes if you melted the glass out of them?”
It was probably meant as an insult. I thought about it anyway. “I won’t lie, there’s a good chance they’d lose them.”
“And what use are blind wolves?” I was beginning to remember quite how much I hated this woman.
Tara turned back to her grandmother with a look that bordered on contempt. “They are family. And you dishonour us all by even suggesting…”
“A wolf who can no longer hunt is not a wolf. Your coddling of the weak”—here she shot a none-too-subtle glance at Henry—“is what has landed us in this situation.”
Much as I hated to admit it, what had landed them in this situation was that Tara had come to rescue me from the Prince of Wands and he’d taken it so personally he’d decided to systematically dismantle everything the Vane-Tempests had been protecting for the best part of a millennium.
Be that as it may, Tara was clearly through taking shit from her grandmama. Moving back across the sitting room like some fury out of—I dunno, a Greek thing that you didn’t learn about if you went to a state school—she raked a single claw down the face of the dowager marchioness, tracing a thin line of blood from cheekbone to chin.
The old lady looked up, her eyes steel-cold and defiant. “If you think impetuousness is a substitute for will, you are sorely mistaken.”
There wasn’t much point continuing the discussion after that. Tara dismissed the pack, including her grandmother, arranged for Sofia to be taken somewhere relatively safe and restful, and then turned her attention to me.
“So I take it we’re passing on those chains,” I told her once we were alone.
“Stop trying to be funny.”
I staggered to my feet, half-regretted it at once, but made my way over to her anyway. “Sorry—I—it’s just how I deal.”
“I know.” She brushed the back of her hand down my cheek. “And you were … helpful tonight. Against the storm.”
“You came through for me. What kind of a shitty person would I be if I didn’t do the same for you?” To be fair, my track record in this regard was fifty-fifty at best, but I was trying to be a less awful person.
She glided closer, her hands coming to rest on my hips. “I can have a room made up for you if you—with your injuries.”
That would have been the sensible thing. I had a broken arm for fuck’s sake. And tooth marks in my thigh. “No, I feel like you need the company. Fuck, so do I.”
“Thank you.”
She leaned in and kissed me with a gentleness I was still finding surprising. Then she led me to bed.
25
Me & Tara
Tara arranged for a servant to retie the splint on my arm and to do something about the bleeding from my leg. Then she helped me to undress because honestly this sleeping in my clothes malarkey was getting unhelpful, and we both slid somewhat awkwardly under her absurd-thread-count covers. For an exercise involving that much nudity it was remarkably unsexual, and I was struggling not to find it at least a little bit romantic.
Because that was not what I needed. I’d come to Tara after finishing with Julian because I’d been pretty sure she could always be relied upon to fuck me until I was numb everywhere that mattered and too out my mind on endorphins to hate myself. I hadn’t come looking for somebody to take care of me or protect me or stand up for me or give a shit if I was hurt.
“Is this—is this okay for you?”
She traced her fingertips down the inside of my good arm. “Is what okay?”
“Well, when we first met it was all one day you’ll beg me to fuck you and now it’s more one day I’ll gently tuck you under the covers and make you feel safe and warm while you wait for your broken arm to heal. I figured you were mostly in this so you could use me as your filthy mortal sex toy.”
She laughed. It was a melancholy sort of laugh, the sort you gave when—well—when you’d had a blazing row tinged with real physical violence with your actual grandmother over whether the lives of your blind family members were worth saving. “I have plenty of sex toys, Kate Kane. Living and inanimate. And you shouldn’t flatter yourself that you’re quite so good in bed that I’d have done everything I’ve done out of sheer carnal temptation.”