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When she uttered a sound between a whimper and a frustrated growl, he laughed. Laughed against her mouth, rested his forehead on hers, his hands still cradling her face. The intimacy of that gesture hit her hard, smashed through the fog of need and passion in her brain. What in the woods’ darkest pits was she doing? This was wrong on so many levels. He was the very last male she should lust after.
With a hitch in her breath, she drew back, her eyes downcast, and turned away from him. “We should go to bed. I’ll take the top bunk, you’ll take the bottom one. We leave at dawn.”
She didn’t look back, didn’t dare check for his reaction. The heavy silence that followed her statement was indication enough. She could only hope he wouldn’t press her for an explanation.
No way could she tell him the sinister truth behind her need to keep him at arm’s length.
Chapter 10
The morning light streaming in from the living room windows painted Rhun’s face in a golden glow, made his pale blue-green eyes shine even more brightly. Plopping down on the couch next to him, Merle sighed.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“How blindingly beautiful you are.” She gestured wildly in his general direction.
That damn, sneakily hot-as-hell smirk of his curled his mouth, lit his eyes.
“Of course,” she added, just to take him down a notch, “you often temper the ethereal quality of your looks by opening your mouth and shooting off a sarcastic remark that makes me want to strangle you, so there is some balance.”
“I’m offended,” Rhun declared, glaring at her.
“Oh? Why?”
“My sarcastic remarks only make you want to strangle me? That’s so mild and unimaginative. What happened to wanting to eviscerate me after beating me to a pulp? Do I need to step up my game? Because clearly I’m not annoying you enough anymore.” He crossed his arms and pouted.
She snickered and smacked his shoulder. “I may yet use that spoon I’ve been threatening you with.”
One side of his mouth tipped up, and his eyes sparked with interest. “That’s more like it.”
“I’ve been wondering,” she said after a pause, sobering, “about this witch-demon hybrid thing.” She waved at her belly. “I’m a little worried about it, to be honest. I don’t know what to expect. How much of her will be demon, how much witch? What will her powers be like?” She looked up at him. “Her needs? I didn’t find any precedent to go by…”
“I did.” He shrugged at her inquisitive look. “I did some research among my kind. Turns out there was a case of a mating between a bluotezzer demon and a witch some eighty years ago, in Europe. She was expelled from her community, which is probably why you didn’t find anything in your archives.”
Merle growled, irate at the thought of another witch being ostracized just because she fell in love with a demon. Those damn bigoted, narrow-minded, hateful—
“Yes to all of that,” he said, nodding at what had to be a murderous expression on her face. “Anyway, the couple had three children, all of them daughters.”
“The witch gene.”
“Yep, seems like it.” His free hand came up to twirl a lock of her hair around his fingers. “They had witch powers.”
“But…?” Merle prodded. His tone definitely indicated a but.
“They were part demon, too.” He met her eyes. “They needed to satisfy one of the nourishment needs of my species, but only one, and always the same one, for the rest of their lives.”
Merle blew out a breath. That wasn’t so bad. “Well, then I hope they’ll only have to take pleasure.”
Rhun bristled, his aura blazing. “Well, I damn sure hope they won’t! If it was up to me, they’d have to take pain.”
She stared at him, baffled.
“We are talking,” Rhun growled in response to her scowl, “about my daughters. They will never—ever—take pleasure from a male. They will be cute little witch volcanoes for their entire lives, and the only thing they’ll ever do to males is cause them pain. Are we clear?”
Merle stared at him a moment longer, trying to maintain a straight face, until she couldn’t fight it anymore. She burst out laughing. Flopping down face-first on the couch, she laughed and laughed and laughed, coming up once, thinking she could sober up and stop.
One look at Rhun’s disgruntled expression had her wheezing with laughter again. She barely noticed when he left the couch and stalked out of the room, muttering something sounding like “not funny” under his breath.
