Page 114 of Playing with Fire

“Most girls don’t like snakes—or gorgons.”

“Are you going to make me clean up after you?”

Quinn bristled. “Of course not!”

“I don’t see what the problem is. Okay, I see one problem. You sedated me, you bastard!”

“You weren’t paying enough attention to me. If you had been paying enough attention to me, I wouldn’t have gotten away with it.” With a smug smile, he shifted me in his arms. “You’re so pretty when you’re angry.”

“You’re crazy.”

“For you.”

I blushed.

Quinn’s grandfather sighed and cleared his throat again. “Instead of standing here flirting, we really should deal with the nest. You’ll have plenty of time to seduce your bride later, little Samuel. First, you must take her somewhere safe, then you can deal with the females.”

“No one will hurt her.”

“And should they try?”

“I’ll rip their heads off.”

Sexy or creepy, sexy or creepy—I went with very sexy with a side dish of creepy. “That sounds messy.”

Quinn’s chuckle had a rather villainous quality to it. “I’ll petrify them first, if that’ll make you feel better.”

While breaking a statue would be a lot less bloody, I wasn’t sure the thought of Quinn being able to tear stone apart with his bare hands helped any. The tension in his body and the way he tightened his grip warned me he meant every word.

A flash of resentment partnered with the rekindling of my desire to strip him of the shredded ruins of his shirt and make certain he understood he belonged to me and only me. A frustrated sigh burst out of me.

“Shh, my beautiful. Soon.”

Quinn carried me upstairs to the main entry hall, across the room to the opposite door, and hesitated at the hallway lined with archways. Judging from the flame-scorched walls, the phoenixes had blasted the doors into ash. “Their ‘guest’ suites. Most were occupied by statues, but I suspect they were infected.”

I heard the warning in his voice, but I looked anyway.

If there had been statues in the chambers, very little remained of them, and guilt clawed away at my chest. I had been the one to bargain with the phoenixes. They had agreed to abide by my wishes.

I had asked them to destroy the dust and spare the living, but the statues, technically, hadn’t been alive when the birds had destroyed them. How many could have been saved? How many would have become carriers?

If I had thought things through a little better, things would be different. Now, no one would ever know.

“Did you get a count?”

“Yes.” Quinn didn’t elaborate, for which I was grateful. He shifted me in his arms and carried me down the hall to a spiral staircase, which opened to a massive room littered with the naked statues of women, a few incubi, and a single succubus. At the center of the room, six gray-green figures curled together in a nest of torn mattresses, shredded sheets and blankets, and clothing.

Snakes hissed while scales scraped on stone, but only one of the figures moved.

Audrey. I curled my lip in a silent snarl. Quinn eased me out of his hold and leaned me against the cold stone wall. It shifted behind me. I struggled to escape so I could beat the hell out of my husband’s ex-wife for everything she had done.

Without any sign of noticing my efforts, Quinn forced my arms to my sides and brushed his lips to mine. A blend of fury and desire swept through me and stole my breath.

Stone crackled and covered my wrists before banding across my chest and spreading, imprisoning me from hips to knees. “You wretch. Let me go!”

Quinn kissed me again. If misbehaving got me more of him and his touch, I’d have to be a very bad girl, often. With a low chuckle, he trailed kisses along my cheek and down my throat. “She’s watching, and she’s jealous. She wants you, but she doesn’t dare leave the nest while there are males here. Of course, she may also see a use for us males. You know what they say about blind squirrels and nuts.”

Yeah, I knew all about blind squirrels finding a nut every now and then. I’d managed to con Quinn into marrying me, after all, with a little help from his insane family. After I figured out how to get free of the stone pinning me to the wall, I’d teach Audrey a lesson or two, then I’d deal with my husband for pinning me to the wall in the first place.