Page 30 of With Wing And Claw

Gods-damned demon senses.

‘You offered your help.’ Keeping her voice level, almost curt, was the only way she could get the words past her lips at all. ‘And I accepted it because I needed it. Now I’ve spent a day building a reliable group of allies around me, and I’m no longer in need of outside assistance. Which means you should … well … you know …’

Leave.

This wasn’t hard. This couldn’t be hard.

Her lips faltered all the same.

‘Ah,’ Naxi said cheerfully, stretching out in the armchair like a content cat. Black silk cascaded like a shadow around her in the deepening twilight. ‘You’re telling me to get out of here, aren’t you?’

Thysandra blinked.

‘You’re so predictable, Sashka.’ A fond, radiant smile. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you really want. I’m not a monster, you see.’

That last sentence was definitely a lie.

Which didn’t inspire much confidence in the one that had preceded it, either – because good gods, this was much, much too easy again. Where was the shock? Where were the pleas? This was the same female who’d snuck into that bloody underground cell over and over again, no matter how hard Thysandra had shouted at herto stay away … so what were the chances that she would just give up now, not even a word of discussion before accepting the inevitable?

‘What is the catch?’ Thysandra said slowly.

‘Catch? What catch?’ Naxi’s smile grew even more disarming. ‘You’re telling me to leave, so I’ll leave first thing in the morning. There doesn’t have to be anything else to it, does there?’

First thing in the morning.

There it was.

‘You think I’ll let you spend the night here?’ Her voice cracked. ‘When you know I’m going to make you leave? What’s stopping you from strangling me in my sleep if—’

Naxi rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be dramatic, Sashka. Of course I won’t strangle you. And what else were you planning to do – kick me out onto the streets in the middle of the night? You know as well as I do that I’m not going to find a ship or an alf to get me out of here at this time of day.’

That was an annoyingly good point.

She really hadn’t thought that far ahead, but at the same time … ‘You’d survive perfectly well for a single night. Just cosy up to the Labyrinth again if you need to.’

‘I made thebedfor us,’ Naxi complained, draping herself dramatically over the padded armrest, blinking up at Thysandra with moist blue eyes. ‘Do you really want to make me sleep on hard stone after I—’

‘You made the fuckingbed?’

‘Yes?’ A sullen, alarmingly tempting pout. ‘I thought I’d take care of you, and also, I didn’t have anything else to do except scare the living daylights out of passing fae. Why are you looking so surprised, exactly?’

‘You … you thought …’ She was running out of words and sense at the same time. ‘You thought I’d crawl into bed with you? Just like that? Withyou? After … after …’

‘I’m proposing wesleep, Sashka.’ In a flutter of movement, Naxi sat upright again, nimble fingers toying with the sash of the black gown. It had fallen open a few inches, revealing a thin shoulder, the ridge of a fragile collarbone, and absolutely nothing else beneath. ‘You know it’s possible to lie in the same bed without fucking, don’t you?’

Did she?

That was to say … of course she knew. She’d spent plenty of nights sharing narrow tents with fellow soldiers, male or female, and not had contact with anything except the occasional inconvenient elbow flying around – the sort of sleeping that was just business, just pragmatic necessity. But none of those tentmates had been tiny, silk-clad demons with lively little hands and pouty lips that just begged to—

No.

No, she wasnotgoing to think about kissing anyone.

‘I’m not sleeping in a bed with you,’ she said through gritted teeth, averting her eyes. It felt like a surrender to look away – but hell, if she just kept repeating that simple sentence, she couldn’t be talked into anything, could she? She didn’t owe the little terror any explanation. Explanations would just lead to discussions she could lose. ‘That’s all I have to say about it. Leave now or leave tomorrow, but—’

‘Well, you’ll have to take the couch, then,’ Naxi said dreamily. ‘You’re not banishing me from the bed I made myself. That’s just unfair.’

‘I’m not sleeping on my own fucking couch! I—’