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Tallak got to his feet and held out his hand to her. “Come on.” When she just stared at his outstretched hand with a dubious look on her face, he drawled, “It’s not a poisonous snake, you know.”
“Venomous,” she said as she laid her fingers in his palm and let him pull her up to standing.
“What?”
“A snake would be venomous, not poisonous. Venomous is used for when something bites you and injects you with toxin. Poisonous is when you eat something and it makes you ill.”
And there she went being all prim and proper again. “Sexy know-it-all,” he muttered, but he removed the sting from his words by yanking her close and surprising her with a sneaky kiss.
After all, he had to keep her on her toes, keep chipping away at those walls she’d tried to raise up again between them. The fact that she’d let him hold her while she cried, had told him about what had upset her, was a good start.
When he’d come in and seen her weeping on the stairs, something inside of him had snapped and roared in murderous fury. His offer to kill whoever had hurt her hadn’t been an empty one—all it would have taken was one word from her, and he’d have gone and slain the one she’d named, brought their head back to prove his readiness to defend her.
That it was Rose who’d made her cry had kind of thrown a wrench in his bloodthirsty devotion.
The next best thing to going out and bathing in the blood of her enemies, though, was to have her curl into him while she cried, to have her trust him enough to see her like this, to be the one to soothe her. That she’d taken comfort from him, it calmed the still-violent mating urge.
Now, he pulled her along down the hallway, toward the next step in his plan to court her.
“So,” he said as he ushered her into her bedroom, “if it bites me, and I die, it’s venomous, but if I bite it and I die, it’s poisonous.”
“Uh, yeah, you could put it that way.”
He steered her past the bed, though not without a flicker of regret that he wouldn’t be using that bed with her right now. “What if it bites me, and it dies?”
She turned to him with a raised brow. “Then you’re poisonous.”
“What if it bites itself, and I die?”
“Then someone cursed you using an animal sacrifice. Why are you shoving me toward the bathroom?”
“Because you need to clean up, do whatever magic you females do with your hair and face that makes you even more stunning than you already are, and then slip into something that allows you to move but also makes you feel sexy.”
She dug in her heels and threw a narrow-eyed look at him over her shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I’m taking you out.”
“What? I can’t go out!”
“Not like this, you can’t.” He waved at her dirtied clothes. “That’s why I’m telling you to get a move on and dress up.”
“No, I mean, I don’t have the time to go out. I—I need to—”
“What? Look at this book?” He wiggled the volume on sigils he’d snatched from her. “We’ll drop by Merle’s and tell her to go through it.”
“But—”
“Hazel.” He leveled a stern look at her. “Let someone else take over for once. You’ve been working yourself ragged, and you deserve a break.”
Not to mention that after what had just gone down with Rose, she would desperately need a distraction. She could protest all she wanted, but letting off some steam would do her good.
He caught her gaze, his voice gentling. “You don’t need to hold everything together all by yourself. Take tonight off.”
Uncertainty flickered in her eyes, but she eventually nodded. “All right.”
“Good. Now, chop-chop!” He slapped her butt, pushed her—gently, since he wouldn’t demon-handle his witch—into the bathroom, and closed the door before she could snap at him.
He heard muffled grumbling from the other side as he leaned against the doorframe.
