Page 28 of The Demigod Complex
“I took the liberty of moving your seat as far away from mine as possible.” Leia glanced meaningfully across the table.
Castor choked back a laugh. So that’s what she’d been doing earlier. He and Kaios, as the most powerful beings present—even if the werewolf was an unexpected addition—were both treated as guests of honor, seated with the bride and groom, but that didn’t mean Leia had to sit close to the man.
“Out of respect for Tala and Marrok, I won’t share our story with them,” Leia continued.
Kaios’s lips flattened then pulled back in a silent snarl that had Castor’s fists bunching. Werewolves were notorious for hair-trigger tempers and a tendency toward crazy.
Visibly schooling his features to amusement, Kaios stepped back. “I would have thought you’d learned from the last time.” He tut-tutted. “Still high and mighty. Even without your spring, hmm?” He made his way around the large round table to the opposite side.
Castor’s entire body tensed with the need to lunge for the man’s neck. Leia’s only reaction was to tighten her hand around his, holding him back. Rage burned a cruel path through Castor’s chest—at Kaios as well as at himself. He shouldn’t have let her do this.
“She’s not alone anymore,” he said, biting off the words.
Deliberately, provocatively, Castor trailed a finger across the smooth skin of her upper back and placed a proprietary hand at her nape. Claiming.
She turned her head to blink at him, a question in her eyes. He returned her gaze with a warm smile, solely for her. One he meant. Satisfaction zoomed through him as she shivered beneath his touch and her eyes darkened to the hue of a midnight ocean. He’d started this for their audience of one, but Leia’s shiver had him laser focused entirely her. With wicked intent he trailed his fingertips down her spine in a feather-light touch designed to tease. At the same time, he dropped his gaze to her strawberry-colored lips, eager for another taste.
“I see. Found yourself a new lover, Lyleia?”
But beyond a scowl at the use of her full name—hisname for her—Castor kept his gaze locked with Leia’s. He swallowed at the need he could see in the color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
“Castor is a wonderful man. I’m lucky to know him.”
Suddenly, with everything inside him, Castor wished she meant it. That she did think him wonderful. That she felt lucky because she was his.
He gave himself a mental shake. “I should thank Brimstone.”
“You know Delilah?” Tala asked, clearly happy for a different topic.
He nodded. “She found Lyleia for me.”
“She’s fantastic.”
“She must be a fantastic pimp,” Kaios said with a sneer.
Castor leveled a hard glare on the werewolf. “Watch it.”
“Or what, demigod?” the werewolf spat.
Castor sent an enigmatic smile across the table and had the satisfaction of seeing the werewolf pause. Between the two of them, he’d know Castor was more powerful.
The waiter appeared and set down a steak in front of the wolf. Castor flicked a hand and lightning shot from his fingertip, zagging across the table and hitting Kaios’s plate. A small thunderclap followed, making everyone in the room jump. The tang of burnt ozone mixed with the smoky scent of charred meat. What had been a rare piece of meat was now black and crispy.
Leia turned her head into Castor’s shoulder, trying to hide her laugh in the silence that followed his small demonstration of power.
Usually he let people guess his parentage, letting what they didn’t know worry them. Even more rarely did he whip out his control of lightning in a blatant display, but Kaios was too full of his own power and importance. The guy needed knocking down a peg. He might have bent Poseidon’s ear, but Castor’s father was Zeus, and the king of the gods trumped his oceanic sibling.
And now Kaios knew that Castor could turn a bigger wrath on him.
In fact, that sounded like a damn good plan.
Kaios had realized the implications if his glare, even as he pinched his lips closed, was anything to go by.
Castor picked up his knife and fork, cut a small piece from his own steak, which was still a lovely pink, and offered the morsel to Leia. She shook her head at his actions, the amusement dancing in her eyes. Amusement and gratitude. She opened those lush lips over the bite then gave a delicate groan of delight that stoked the tension inside him, like coal to a steam engine.
“Delicious,” she murmured.
Unable to resist any longer, he leaned forward to kiss her lips. “Delicious is right.”
