He left some blatant marks and made sure it wouldn’t point to him. She erased the rest. At one point, he smelled blood, prompting a reaction from her until he forcibly held her and warned her that it was deliberate.
“Human?” she mouthed.
He shook his head and watched her aggravation ease slightly. He managed to get her to keep going until they were no longer leaving marks and were out of the forest, where he took over and led the twist and turns through buildings and streets. They stopped in a well-lit neighborhood rife with life, where she took a step back and assessed him. He did the same, noting her lack of shame at her torn-shirt state in a high-class area.
“Friend of yours?”
He shook his head at the query. “Same social circles but never a friend. He’s a known asshole who likes one-upping everyone else.”
“That sounds like most of your kind.”
He mock gasped. “I would be very hurt, except my kind didn’t display the best attitude towards you back there.”
“We can agree on that.”
She hesitated, then nodded, and looked like she was ready to leave.
“Come back with me.”
The woman stopped and whirled on him.
“Because I owe you a favor now?”
His brows rose at her guess. “No. Because it’s fun.”
She gaped at him as if he was crazy, and maybe he was for not understanding what was going on in her head. He cleared his throat. She blinked repeatedly, as if trying to clear her ruminations, then narrowed her gaze at him.
“Let me get this straight. Do you want me to return to your abode and participate in whatever sexual orgy is going on there? And you get to watch like the pervert you are?”
“They are Fae. They are sexual by nature.” The rest of her sentence was absorbed and left him dumbfounded. “And what?”
She took a step closer. “You heard me.”
So did he, noticing the dark rings of her eyes in her indignation. He was pretty sure he shared the same state.
“I’m not a voyeur.” The protest rang loud and clear. “I’m an art lover and art maker.”
“How about you stop taking inspiration from sexual acts?”
“How about you stop judging me when you don’t even know me and construed your version of the truth based on one scenario?”
He expected more yelling and was flabbergasted when she reared back as if slapped. But she didn’t look offended. He should just walk away and forget about it, but her moves in the forest flitted back in his senses and made him want to capture it in motion. Someday.
But it had to start somewhere.
“Edmund Wilder, as you probably already know.”
A stubborn look flashed before she considered. “Alexa Bennett.”
“How about you come back to where you first met me and see if you form a second opinion? Maybe pass the time, too, while you are at it.”
Silence.
“Fine.”
Chapter 3
This was a bad idea. Sure, it didn’t trump all the bad ideas in her life, but Alexa believed she had plenty of space to do more—and this was one of them. But no matter how she tried to convince herself to leave, her feet trailed after the man who led the way back underground. Perhaps it was self-preservation, choosing what she presumed was the lesser evil and protecting her territory in the process. Perhaps it was curiosity about whether he was lying or not.