Page 47 of Seared Fates

I falter, my mind going blank. He laughs and pushes my hand away so he can slam the door in my face, leaving me dumbfounded that my hard-on doesn’t waver. Instead of questioning it, I do exactly what he ordered and get breakfast started.

Chapter nineteen

Kai

Rolling my eyes, I look up at Vidar. “Did you write in my to-do list?”

“Why would I do such a thing?” he replies, somehow sounding satisfied while folded into my car.

“What’s this thing you drew?”

Vidar leans over, grunting when the gear shift digs into his leg. “A flower, like yours.”

“Mate, that ain’t a flower.” I laugh, throwing my notepad with my unicorn pencil into the backseat.

Vidar makes a dismissive noise while trying to find a comfortable position. Already the seat is pushed back as far as possible, but he’s hunched in it like a massive stone gargoyle.

“You need a new car,” he finally grunts. “Yours is falling apart.”

Gasping, I put my hands over the vents that I can’t turn on unless I want my Mini Cooper filling with smoke. “Don’t listen to him, baby.”

“You call this piece of shit ‘baby’?” Vidar twists to throw me a look, but ends up hitting his head on the roof.

“That’s what you get for being a dickhead, and her given name is ‘Angel’, thank you very much.” I make little soothing noises to my car while adjusting the rear view mirror held on with duct tape, and get to see the cars behind us stuck in the same deadlock traffic.

Vidar adjusts again, resulting in his knee colliding with the glove compartment, the little door flopping open like the tongue of a dead cartoon character.

“It would be faster to walk,” he complains.

“It really wouldn’t be.” I grin wickedly and stretch out my body like I’m on a beach somewhere, birds instead of horns. Sunshine instead of this miserable grey blanket overhead.

Vidar curls up tighter against the passenger side, leaning into the door as he scans me. “I’ve noticed something about you.”

“You seem to notice a lot about me.”

“You deserved to be noticed,” Vidar replies, voice low enough to make my stomach clench. Vidar then seems to rethink his statement when he adds, “By me.”

“You’re going to be a nightmare when I get a boyfriend,” I reply, dryly.

“A boyfriend?” Vidar shoots up, then mutters a curse when his crown meets the roof—again. “Why do you want a boyfriend?”

“Because you're straight and I’m gay,” I point out, hoping I sound teasing instead of hurting, and press on a button so Vidar’s window jitters down. Winter immediately rushes in to cloud my breath, but Vidar gets more space.

“Annoying,” Vidar grunts as he drapes his arm outside the window.

I run my fingers over the duct tape holding my seat together, focusing instead on the cold air biting my skin and the white BMW in front of us, anything to avoid the tangled mess of these feelings.

“I agree, bestie,” I chuckle at the whole cosmic fuck up of our situation. Either that or I’ll end up in the fetal position crying. “Now tell me what you noticed.”

“You’re a tattoo artist.”

“Yeah, my other hobby of being chased by blood mages doesn’t really pay the bills.”

Vidar ignores my sarcasm. “Why don’t you have any tattoos?”

My mouth goes dry, and I drum my fingers against the steering wheel instead of going for my braids.

He isn’t the first person to ask, and he won’t be the last. Normally, I’d make a joke or wave it off, then start asking questions until they forget they were ever interested. But something about Vidar makes me want to pry open my chest and offer up pieces of myself I really shouldn’t reveal so easily.