“Seliah,” he answered on an ardent growl, adding a second finger and curling it inside her. “I’m going to devour you whole.”
“Jadren,” she gritted through her teeth, saying his name for the third time. “You said I could trust you. You promised me.”
Those words penetrated his frenzy, his determined assault of her senses relenting ever so slightly. Pressing her advantage, she sliced her fingernail along his cheek, just hard enough to be painful on the laceration and healing bruises, marking the previous line where his cheek had been scored and healed. Reminding him of the scar beneath the new ones. “This was real,” she told him. “Your mother would never have thought of the snake.”
Sanity glimmered in his eyes, the fingers curling inside her faltering, his hand cupping her mound stilling, holding her almost gently. “The snake,” he echoed, a shudder rippling through him.
“Yes.” Encouraged, she eased a hand between their bodies, creating a separation both disappointing and a necessary respite. Grasping his wrist, she eased his hand away from her, her now empty passage mourning the loss. “Remember the snake.” She focused on that decidedly non-erotic image also. “And the box. Remember how I wept?”
His expression softened further, his clasp on her throat relenting. “You were so afraid.”
“You understood my fear of being trapped, being captive, because of this place. We’re both in a cage now and you promised to save me from that. I’m afraid, Jadren. You have to get me out of here. Please.”
His mind cleared further, a dawning expression of horror creeping across his face. “Dark arts,” he breathed. “Seliah, what have I done to you?”
“Nothing,” she assured him, but he backed away, fully releasing her and taking in her dishevelment. Lifting the hand he’d been caressing her with, he stared at it, how it was slick with her arousal. He might as well have been holding that snake, the way his face contorted in revulsion. Wiping his hand on his torn clothing—in a gesture of abject disgust that would have offended her if she hadn’t understood the reason behind it—he raised his wizard-black eyes to hers. The depth of emotion in them staggered her and she reached out a hand to him, to do what, she didn’t know, but he stepped back in alarm.
“Don’t,” he warned her sharply. “I’m not completely in control.”
Dropping her hand slowly, she nodded. “It’s all right, Jadren. Everything is all right now.”
He barked out a bitter laugh. “Oh, poppet, you are so very, very wrong.”
~ 19 ~
Gabriel stared at her, apparently frozen in place by Nic’s news. “What do you mean, they’re no longer at House Sammael?”
Nic had tried to choose her moment wisely. Giving Gabriel the bad news was never going to be easy, but there was also timeliness to consider. He’d have been beyond angry if she’d delayed telling him. Also, he was going to lose his shit regardless. So she’d chosen their bedroom as a place where they could be alone—no incidental casualties if he lost control of his magic—where he felt safe, and where she could employ whatever means necessary to calm him. This would not be the sort of explosion she could redirect into rough sex, however. It would take all her wiles to keep him from charging off into the night.
Now she wasn’t sure about the wisdom of being alone with him. Gabriel stood too still, wizard-black eyes glittering dangerously, his body rigid with freezing fury, magic spiking silver against her skin. Even though she knew Gabriel would never hurt her, she had to take a breath. Nothing like being in a locked room with an enraged wizard. “Sabrina sent the courier, as promised. Selly—and Jadren—are no longer at House Sammael. She was captured by hunters and taken there. Jadren followed after. They were both gone by the following morning.”
Though Gabriel didn’t move, shadows stirred around him, nearly like amorphous wings unfurling. The dark side of the moon showing its face. “The following morning,” he repeated in that eerily whispery calm.
“Yes.” She inclined her head, acknowledging the blame, the guilt. She’d asked him to wait and now this.
“And yet they haven’t made their way here,” Gabriel continued, sounding almost musing. If not for the silver-bright tension in the room, a person might think he was taking this calmly. Outside in the formerly clear night, rain began to patter against the window.
Here we go, Nic thought to herself. The deluge begins.
“Tell me the rest,” Gabriel commanded, wizard-black eyes drilling into her. Her knees weakened, wanting to commence kneeling. “There’s worse news. I can see it in you.”
Taking another breath, she found it didn’t help. She really wanted to kneel and beg for his forbearance. “They went to House El-Adrel,” she said in a rush, then knotted her fingers together in dread.
Gabriel regarded her almost curiously. “El-Adrel.”
She nodded.
“I’m going to disembowel Jadren,” Gabriel said thoughtfully. “Unless I can think of another way to kill him that’s slower and more painful.”
“We don’t know that—”
He held up a hand to stop her, the gesture so definitively commanding that she immediately ceased speaking. “Tell me everything Sabrina said. In order.”
“I can do one better,” she replied, relieved not to have to speak the words. Moving warily closer to him, she held out the missive Sabrina Sammael had sent via courier.
Gabriel raised a brow at her skittish behavior, but didn’t comment, taking the folded paper from her outstretched hand. As he read the report, she observed him closely, assembling her arguments. He must have read it several times, because the minutes dragged on, excruciatingly slow. Finally he raised his gaze to hers, and lifted one dark brow. “He took her in a Sammael carriage to House El-Adrel. I’m not at all clear why you’re defending him.”
“We don’t know the extenuating circumstances,” she began.
