Page 48 of Blood Oath
The one upside is that I didn’t carry any special weapons into training today, so I didn’t lose any of them in the river. Unfortunately, anything else hidden in my pockets is now gone.
When I meet Crypt’s blue and purple gaze in a silent glare, he swallows harshly and shoves Baelfire toward me. “Stroke off later. She’s freezing.”
Bael doesn’t miss a beat, stripping out of his shirt to offer it to me.
Holy shit.
He’s even more jacked than I expected. A glorious expanse of muscle upon muscle, all under smooth golden-tan skin. The ridges of his abs and the sharp V cut of his pelvis momentarily distracts me from the fact that I’m in a similar state of undress.
What would it feel like to touch all of that? That body pressed against mine…
I kick myself internally. I already know it will be revolting.
Now is not the time to start second-guessing that aspect of my life.
Before they can notice where my attention has lingered, I grab his shirt, careful to avoid touching him, and tug it over my head quickly. It’s so big on me that the hem brushes my mid-thigh. It smells like him, that same singed cedar scent I caught earlier.
“Shit, I’m so sorry. I was just…you’re just so fucking pretty that I?—“
He’s interrupted when Silas swears, gently but firmly grabbing my bare wrist and lifting it to show the faint burns along my arm. Immediately, I wrench my arm away, jaw clenching.
“Hold still,” he grits, pulling out his bleeding crystal.
He’s going to try to heal me. Everyone knows Silas Crane is among the most powerful blood fae alive, so a healing spell would be nothing to him, merely a prick of the finger and a drop of his potent blood. But the last thing I need is someone trying to heal me with blood magic.
“No,” I warn.
Silas’s glare is heated. “I will not tolerate you being hurt. Ever. Now, don’t move.”
He tries to step closer, and I let my poker face fall away so he can see how pissed I’ll be if he tries to use magic on me right now. “Fuck off.”
When he moves toward me again, obviously more focused on my scant injuries than the threat of my wrath, Crypt grips his shoulder and warns coldly, “She said no, Crane.”
Silas whirls with a snarl, breaking the incubus’s hold on him, and for a moment, I wonder if they’ll go for each other’s throats. Then Crypt turns his back on the fae, a clear insult, and looks down at my bare hands.
“Your gloves are gone.”
No shit. “They burned off.”
He hums nonchalantly, but I notice that all of the pale markings in his skin glow faintly purple before fading. Something in his violet irises reminds me that this is my most unpredictable match. The one they call a psychopath.
“Out of pure curiosity, and not at all because I’m about to feed them their own spleen…who did this to you, darling?”
That captures Silas and Bael’s attention, too, and now three high-profile legacies are hanging on my next words, like hunting hounds salivating before a chase.
“Just forget this happened,” I tell them before trudging away from the river.
It really is cold out here, sopping wet like this. I wrap Bael’s shirt tighter around myself, whipping almost frozen hair out of my face.
They don’t let me go that easy. Baelfire is suddenly on my right, instinctively reaching for me and then pulling his hand back with a harsh swear. “Damn it, Boo, your feet are going to freeze into solid blocks of ice. At least let me carry you.”
I’m prepared to ignore him completely, but suddenly, I can’t think about anything except what Sierra said. Baelfire and her in bed. The hickeys. Him fucking her, watching her face.
Maybe she was lying, but just picturing all of it sends an entirely foreign emotion roaring to the surface, scalding my skin worse than fire ever could, and I do possibly the stupidest thing I have ever done.
I plant my back foot, turn, and punch a dragon shifter in the face.
Hard.
