Page 42 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

At a fork in the path, I guided her toward my tent. Was that incredible presence of mind enough to prove my sobriety? I chanced a sideways look at her. It did not seem so. But her desire to have it out rose to a fever pitch all the same. Thank Haz for her impatience.

“Why did you make me wear the collar?” she demanded. “You could have tied my hands and brought me along like any other prisoner.”

I looked skyward. This again?

It was my turn to take my time. Now definitely wasn’t the moment to explain my deeper issues with bards.

Nor the time to reveal that I could see magic and knew that hers was wild and colorful and stronger than it had any right to be.

Probably not the time to tell her how annoyingly alluring her face and body were either.

“I wanted to,” I said at last, shrugging away the rest.

She stopped in the path, causing me to sway. Her jaw locked. Her eyes blazed. Angry tears lit those green jewels. My insides twisted.

“I’m serious, B?k. The Temple Mother told me—” She took a strangled breath, fighting for calm. “She told me I would find the key to my legacy in a centuries-old book. I need to know what she meant. Do you know something about me? Do you— Is— If?— ”

She let out an animalistic groan and shook her head.

Giving up. It washed out from her like a tide.

Whatever confession she’d hoped to drag out of me, she’d decided she wouldn’t get it.

Which was probably fair. I didn’t know what she was after.

I wasn’t a secret vault of Ero knowledge.

If we were part of some great destiny, someone had forgotten to inform me.

Yet I caught her wrist as she made to stalk off and spun her back to me.

Because I couldn’t let her go. It wasn’t a want anymore.

It was a necessity. I needed Ero like Hammond needed sticky buns.

Like Brü needed Aelith. Like Tavish needed to watch his fucking back, because I’d just remembered the way he casually disappeared earlier when I’d intended to smite him for touching what was mine.

Ero’s hope returned briefly—and then died all over again as I stared down at her without giving the answer she craved. But when she tugged to get her arm free, words spilled out of me unbidden.

“Do I know something about you? I know your nostrils flare right before you say something mean,” I said. “I know the air tastes like citrus and spice at your first drop of arousal.”

Her mouth opened, but I put my fingers over her lips.

“I know I could chase you for an eternity and never tire of the way you give in but never quite give up.” I don’t know how her braid ended up in my hand, but it didn’t attack me—and that seemed like a good sign.

I closed my fist gently around it. “I know you torment my dreams with songs I can’t stop hearing. I know you made my old dreams stop.”

Actually, I hadn’t known that until right then. I hadn’t thought about it in some time. But it was true. When I dreamt, I dreamt of Ero. I no longer dreamt of chasing the Hell-fled bard.

“I know you’re going to leave,” I went on, barely audible now. The mead chose a terrible time to make everything fuzzy again. It pulsed behind my eyes, but I forced out the rest. “And I don’t want you to.”

“What?” Ero demanded.

I kissed her. Not in the possessive, consuming way I’d kissed her several times before—the way that promised I planned to take more. No, I kissed her with stars and moonlight inside my skin reaching out for her. Begging.

Her desire morphed into a delightful delicacy she produced better than anyone I’d ever met. A war within a bard. She wanted me, and she hated me, and it was my favorite flavor.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered against her lips.

She nodded. I knew she’d misunderstood. She thought I meant we would talk more tomorrow—not that she would leave me tomorrow. I couldn’t clarify because her lips moved against mine, and I didn’t want them to stop. Not when we were finally almost aligned.

I lifted her. Her legs wound around my middle. We swayed, her tendrils and my shadows both working overtime to hold us upright. The rain soaked us. People streamed past, but no one paid us any attention.

There was still time. Maybe the empty collar didn’t mean what I thought it meant. Maybe she would demand its removal. Maybe she would convince me. Maybe she’d devised a new scheme with Aelith. Maybe after it was off, she would still be mine.

I clung to that lie as I carried her into my room and laid her on my bed. As I stared into those glassy eyes that finally burned for me, even if the tiny crease on her brow remained, I felt light—almost happy?

I lay flush against her, assuming this was the part where we would do all the things I didn’t want to be finished with.

But the stars were leaving, fleeing my body one by one and taking their power with them. The darkness at the edge of my consciousness surged in. The world swayed. Ero made a soft chuffing sound, her lips on my neck.

“Just sleep,” she said. “It’s almost tomorrow now, anyway.”

A tiny, doomed part of me jolted at that—but I was already too far gone to protest. Soon, I was asleep.