Without hesitation, I pull my shirt off, and her hands run up my bare back as I hold it out for her. “You’re being sweet again. I expected you to tell me to find my own fucking shirt.”
I wipe my bloody smile away as I continue to hold the shirt out for her, and her hand wraps around mine as she takes it.
“Where did you get this non-extensive wardrobe of yours, anyway? A nineties punk rock band?” she goes on.
“No idea what that even means,” I tell her absently, my eyes scanning over some of the formulas I’ve recently started putting to use.
“So there are some things you still don’t know, other than how my mother created a haunted forest,” she chirps.
I glance over my shoulder, finding her smirking at me, and I arch an eyebrow as I go to pick up my journal, opening it. My eyes scan it quickly, finding the contents quick to open to me, since the memories are still fresh from reading it this morning.
I know exactly how that forest was created. I just forced myself to forget, because it’s not a useful variable. But she doesn’t need to know that.
“Are you going to explain the forest or just taunt me with it?” I ask when she peers over my arm at the journal she can’t read.
“You literally like to know everything, don’t you? And what language is that?”
“The language is a dead language no one uses anymore. I don’t like to know everything, but I like to learn.”
My arm moves behind her back as I put the journal down, closing it. I should probably spend some time away from it, because the memories are taking longer and longer to go away, making this all twice as dangerous.
“After purgatory released,” she starts as I begin guiding her toward the door, “it was like Pandora’s box being left open for too long.”
“Clearly,” I state dryly. “The anointed are alive again, and I distinctly remember the one and only celebration in the rings being the fact someone told us their very lineage was locked in purgatory forever.”
She bristles, since Leah is one of her family members now, and indeed one of the most powerful types of anointed—and a fucking night stalker, because life wasn’t already complicated enough.
I guide her outside, finding the dim light of the approaching evening, and she rests her head against my chest.
Several pairs of eyes swing our way, and I immediately release her while hopping off the porch. Everyone looks away again, like they know better than to assume anything, but Ella…looks at me like I just slapped her.
“I can’t look to have any weaknesses,” I tell her so quietly that only she can hear.
She rolls her eyes while dematerializing ahead of me, and a few eyes dart to her as she walks ahead in nothing but my shirt that hits her mid-thigh. It’s rather distracting, since I know she’s naked underneath it.
I never pulled on another shirt, so my uncovered scars—per the usual—draw some attention.
“Anyway,” she says, not looking back at me as she walks to the bottom of the field, leaving me to trail her as my eyes watch her bare legs, internally reminding myself what’s important so I don’t push her down to the grass and pick up where we left off. “Pandora’s box doesn’t go back together so well after it’s been unleashed.”
“Not sure why we’re discussing things that I do know,” I point out as she turns around and cocks her eyebrow at me.
“It’s amazing how you go from sweet to normal just by walking outside,” she quips.
I’m in front of her in the next instant, grabbing her at the waist and shoving her against the closest tree. She just smiles when I press against her, caging her in against the tree as I rake my gaze over her face.
Her hands run up my chest, and I start forgetting we have an audience.
“I’m not sweet, Princess. Lose that word from your vocabulary,” I tell her dryly.
Leaning forward, she presses a kiss to my chest, then drags her lips up to my neck, moving to her tiptoes.
“You never let anyone else touch you,” she says quietly. “That much I’ve learned.”
Suppressing a groan as she continues to torment me with her touch that I want to simply enjoy for as long as possible, despite the fact there’s a war we’ve ignored for too long already, I let my forehead drop to hers.
Her eyes stay fixed to mine, even at the odd angle. “And I like touching you,” she adds. “It soothes something inside me—the darkness. It pushes it all back.”
“You were smart to use your beasts to push it back, but I’m going to teach you a less painful way. It’ll take longer to harness the control—”