“Yes, please,” Charity said before Devon could speak up.
“Afraid you’ll fall in lust if people can’t see you?” Rod chuckled as he moved away.
“C’mere,” Devon said again. “I’ll be good. I just want your warmth. Our shared warmth.”
Charity wanted the same thing. However strange she felt about taking their unspoken arrangement public, she knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight without Devon beside her. With the night pressing in, he was the only person who could make her feel safe. So far he’d protected her, and she knew he would keep protecting her as long as she needed it. She needed him, plain and simple, like she’d only ever needed her mother and John before this. They were a team, for better or worse.
Sighing in resignation, she scooched closer. “No funny business,” she said softly, ducking into his outstretched arm.
He drew her in immediately, dragging her up against his body. His arm held her tight, encouraging her head to find the hollow of his shoulder and her arm to drape across his chest.
“Hook your leg between mine. I like that,” he whispered, his breath falling across her forehead.
“We’re still just friends, though,” she whispered, her face heating with the memory of their kiss. “Or pack mates, if you don’t have female friends.”
He laughed and squeezed her. “Nope. We are passive-aggressive acquaintances that spoon well together when shit goes sideways.”
Laughing softly, she let herself relax and tried to ignore the softness that was working into her core. Affection wasn’t what he looked for in a girl. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
Though it was really too bad. When he let himself thaw, he was funny, and witty, and loyal. She loved being with him, even when they were fighting. Maybe especially when they were fighting. At those times, the alpha in him exploded out, raw and wild. Uncontrollable. Untamable. If he was in any way similar in the bedroom, he’d be—
She mentally slapped herself.
“Why’d you jump?” he asked tiredly, turning and wrapping his arms around her. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Charity, I promise.” He kissed her forehead. “So long as you’ll come back and save me like last time.”
She felt his chuckle through his hard chest and let herself melt into his body, feeling sleep tug at her. She ignored the other thing that was tugging at her, urging her to tilt up her face and taste him again. He’d been an excellent kisser, as good at that as he seemed to be at everything else. Including—
She mentally knifed herself this time.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you,” he said, his lips lingering on her cheek. His hardness pressing against her thigh. “Sorry,” he said sleepily, but he didn’t move away. She didn’t ask him to.
She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed through her nose, trying desperately to ignore the raging fire that was threatening to consume her body and make her do something they’d both regret. Thank God her body couldn’t outwardly show what was going on internally. She didn’t want him to know how close she was to issuing a green light.Chapter Thirty-FourRoger glanced up. He sat at the desk in his Brink home on the outskirts of town, half a country away from Santa Cruz. Soon he’d move to a remote location closer to Santa Cruz, but first he needed to get his affairs in order.
Alder walked in holding a few fluttering pages in his clutched hand. His face was unusually grim, his heavy eyebrows low over his eyes.
“What is it?” Roger asked.
“Reports have come in about the possible Arcana.”
“Possible… So it still has not been confirmed.”
“No. There are no guarantees, though it seems like Vlad has no reservations.”
It wasn’t like Vlad to engage in wishful thinking, but given the magical people that the other vampire Brink power player, Darius, had at his disposal, Vlad might be leaning a little too heavily on outlandish possibilities.
Alder settled into a chair in front of the desk. Soft light filtered in through the many windows in Roger’s office, the trees outside swaying gently. Papers crinkled as Alder organized his thoughts. When he was ready, he gave Roger a steady, intelligent gaze. “How aware are you of the custodes’s practice of questing?”
“You mean, when they come of age and power?”
Alder nodded.
“I know they do it. That’s about it.”
“When they reach full power, the timing of which varies depending on the individual’s power level, a custodes—warrior fae—goes on a quest. This quest is self-defined and really could be anything. One person might stay in their home for a moon’s turn doing mind-altering drugs. Another might visit each part of the Realm for some purpose. They return, or go back to normal, when they feel they have completed their quest. Once a quest is completed, they are an adult by their reckoning.”
“Sounds weak.”
Alder huffed, as close to a laugh as he usually came. A shifter’s summons was an extremely dangerous affair, even with someone to guide the new shifter through their first change. Some were killed attempting to travel to the Realm, and of those who did get in, some lacked the magic to sustain their secondary form for any length of time. They were relegated to a mostly human life, cut off from the more magical members of their faction. Devon’s mother had had that affliction. It was why she’d given up on her background and married a non-magical human.