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“Seriously?” I mutter, hooking one arm beneath her knees, the other behind her back. “You’re not even trying.”
“Trying is for people who don’t have portable brooding carriers,” she sighs, curling into me like she belongs there. Like this is her natural state—chaos and comfort, heat and danger, all curled into a girl who doesn’t realize she’s a weapon pressed to my throat.
I don’t stop walking. If I stop, I might drop her. Or kiss her. Or say somethingreal, and I’m not suicidal enough for any of that.
But then her breath hits my neck, hot and sticky-sweet with wine and sin. Her lips brush skin, not quite a kiss, not quite not, and she murmurs, “You smell so good.”
Fuck.
“Drunk girls don’t get to flirt,” I bite out, jaw tight.
“That’s not flirting,” she whispers, voice syrupy and amused. “That’s a confession.”
I should ignore her. I should say something sharp and cruel. Something to push her away like I always do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what Ineedto do.
But instead—
“Of course I smell good,” I mutter. “I’m wrath incarnate. Comes with perks.”
She giggles against my throat, and something in me twists. It’s not rage. Not magic. Something worse.
Somethingsoft.
I shift her higher in my arms. Try to convince myself it’s to carry her better. Not to hold her closer. Not to keep her from sliding into the arms of someone else—Silas or Elias, those reckless bastards who make her laugh and don’t flinch when she touches them like they’re hers.
“You’re warm,” she mumbles. “Warmer than fire.”
“Youlita woman on fire,” I growl. “Maybe don’t talk about temperature right now.”
She hums. “She touched Elias.”
“Still.”
“I’ll do it again.”
“I know.”
And gods help me—I’d let her.
Her finger jabs into my chest like she thinks she’s a threat. Like she hasn’t already carved her name into every nerve I’ve got and made herself a permanent fixture in the parts of me I didn’t think I still had.
She tilts her head, eyes narrowed in mock-seriousness, lips parted like she’s weighing something deadly and divine on the tip of her tongue. “Do you want to know what I’d do,” she says, punctuating each word with another prod to my sternum, “if you smiled at another girl?”
Gods, she’s too close.
Her wine-slick breath ghosts over my jaw, and her legs shift in my hold like she’s trying to climb further up me, as if my arms—already locked beneath her thighs—aren’t close enough. Like she’s trying to break skin with proximity alone.
I grunt, not because I’m in pain. No, this is worse. She’swinning, and she knows it.
“What?” I grind out, jaw clenched, eyes locked to hers because if I look at her mouth again, I’ll do something stupid. “What would you do?”
Her grin curves slow and mean. She leans in, nose brushing mine, and the bond thrums between us—taut and snarling, daring me to snap. “I’d set the world on fire.”
“That’s dramatic,” I murmur.
“Appropriate,” she counters. “You’d burn for me.”
And I would. That’s the sickest part of it. Iwould. I'd drag my claws through the dirt and gut heaven itself if she asked. But I can’t tell her that. I won’t.