Page 55 of Bloody Bargain
“I see the panic in your eyes, mine Tessa,” he murmured, leaning towards my shoulder with a grin. “Are you so concerned for your… husband?”
My breath hitched. I blinked away, hugging my knees tighter. “Badrocks definitely don't use the words husband and wife.”
“No, but I could call you wife if it always makes your ears blush so tenderly.”
“It's the cold.”
“Mm. Your lies taste like victory.”
I huffed, shaking my hair out over my ears.
“I’ve spent a lot of time carving out my soul, D’abel. I’m not good at this sort of thing anymore. It feels uncomfortable.”
He hummed in agreement. “A warrior without armor is indeed vulnerable.”
I scoffed lightly. “I guess so.”
“Have I mentioned that we have eons to—”
“Don’t.” My heart skipped, afraid to hear the way he’d planned to finish that sentence.
D’abel sidled in front of me. His thighs cushioned the sides of my ankles, and he set his chin on my knees, forcing my face back as he exhaled a besotted sigh.
“You enjoyed yourself,” he asked without asking.
“You mean–”
“When you held my throat and fucked me in the sea.”
My pussy clenched. “Yes.”
“My teeth sliding into your neck.”
“Yes.”
“Calling me your b’adruokh.”
My brow creased. “D’abel–”
“Tessa, I will never find you lacking,” he said seriously, his pink eyes fixed on mine. His side irises squeezed towards the front as he drilled all his attention right through my defenses. “I will happily hunt your love through the perilous fields of your temper for centuries. And someday, whether by my clever traps or your own will, I will have you.Allof you.”
I swallowed hard and exhaled slowly, staring at his mouth.
“I won’t make you wait centuries,” I said in a lame rasp. “But right now, it just feels… selfish.”
D’abel lifted my chin with his thick tongue, eyes lidded and flirtatious. When I met his gaze, he slurped the appendage back into his jaws, grinning so that his fangs glinted in the late morning sun. “Then it is my duty to shower you in affection.”
“We don’t have time for that, D’abel.” I lifted my eyes to the coast, where those black figures stood against the clouds in the sky. Silent. Still. D’abel’s tail flopped over itself as he chuffed, flexing his slitted nostrils.
“There is no better time to fall in love than the end of the world,” he teased.
I leveled him with a scolding glare. “They’reauf,D’abel. I can feel it.”
“Mm,” he agreed, a thought creasing the lines of his face. “Gamil is long overdue.”
“Gamil?”
D’abel grinned, leaning back on his palms so the sculpted hills of his abdomen caught the light. “The fallen one. I heard you stabbed them with a fork.”
