The Bitter Seed of Magic

wasn’t anything else I could do right now. And he did need persuading.

I looked at him from under my lashes. ‘What other liberties have you in mind?’

Chapter Forty-Two

‘I am uncertain.’ He skimmed his hand down my body, slipping it beneath the hem of my top and resting his cool palm at my waist. ‘You see, Genevieve, there is really nothing you can give me that I cannot already have for the taking, if I so wished. It removes an element of delicious excitement, knowing you will not resist me.’

Bastard. Play hard to get, why don’t you?

‘Is that what you want, Malik? Resistance?’ I twisted my wrists in his grip, pushing up against him, feeling him hard and ready. ‘Do you want me struggling beneath you, screaming for you to stop as you take me by force?’

He continued to gaze at me, his dark, enigmatic eyes giving nothing away.

‘Or is it that you want me willing?’ His fingers trembled against my side and I knew that was it. I pressed my lips to his throat, tasted salt and spice, and nipped under his jaw. ‘Then you can have me, Malik,’ I whispered, ‘I’m willing.’

He released me and stepped back, his expression suddenly grim. ‘Do not lie to me, Genevieve,’ he said, his voice harsh.

Surprise winged through me and the air in my lungs seemed to whoosh out, leaving me shaky and unsteady. My heart jackhammered in my chest, then it settled. We weren’t playing games any more. This was real. And for some reason he was angry. Angry vamps are never good news.

‘I’m sidhe, Malik, we can’t lie.’ I pressed my back against the wall, keeping my eyes on his, wary.

He braced his hands against the wall to either side of my head, and leaned into me. I froze as his anger chilled the air and my breath trailed between us like a malevolent fog. Dread slicked down my spine, and I fought the instinctive urge to curl into a tight ball, to hide. Mesma. Nothing more. Just good old vamp mesma. I lifted my chin and stared into the opaque darkness of his eyes … and was buffeted by a confusing tornado of emotions: intense desire, rabid hunger, unending guilt, and an incandescent rage. All of them tempered and held in check by an implacable will …

‘Why is having my back-up so important to you that you would do this to obtain it, Genevieve?’

… the emotions swirled around me, and then vanished, leaving me alone in the wind-blasted desolation of a vast barren plain.

‘Genevieve?’

I blinked. His feelings had come and gone so quickly that if it weren’t for the icy quiet they’d left in their wake, I’d have thought I’d imagined them. I was suddenly aware that maybe I’d misread him. Or he me. Or the situation. ‘This isn’t just about back-up,’ I said slowly. ‘I thought you wanted me, and I wanted you too.’

He regarded me for a long moment, then his expression smoothed back to its usual enigmatic blankness. A warm breeze sprung from nowhere, carrying with it a soothing scent of spice and liquorice, and something else, some fragile emotion I couldn’t quite catch … yearning?

‘Tell me what is so important, Genevieve.’

I sighed, bereft as the feeling dissipated, and the order slipped into my mind. ‘I told you, finding the killer, saving the missing faelings, and ultimately breaking the curse.’

‘You would sacrifice yourself to me for this?’

I half-laughed, incredulous. ‘Malik, offering you blood and sex doesn’t even come close to being a sacrifice.’ My gaze skimmed over the lean perfection of his chest, followed the dark silky hair there as it arrowed down to disappear enticingly beneath his low-slung leather trousers and I only just managed not to drool. ‘It’s not like I’m being a martyr here or anything.’

‘You have just told me you cannot lie, Genevieve, but I wonder. Last night you did not want me to touch you, today you remind me that you would prefer to kill me rather than succumb to me, and now you expect me to believe that you want me willingly?’

‘Wow, for someone who’s got five centuries behind them you’re a bit dense, aren’t you? Last night, I was furious, and damn right, I didn’t want you to touch me. And no, I’m not going to be yours or any other vamp’s mindless little blood-slave, or your over-protected, pampered blood-pet either. And I’ll do whatever it takes so I don’t end up like that. But that wasn’t what I thought was on the table here. Sex and blood I’m more than happy to indulge in.’

‘You say that, and yet you feed Darius by way of a plastic bag.’ His mouth curled in distaste.

‘What?’

‘If you are happy to indulge in sex and blood, then what purpose do the bags hold?’

‘C’mon, Malik,’ I said, exasperated, ‘that’s got nothing to do with anything.’

‘Tell me, Genevieve.’

‘Fine. I’m not interested in going to Sucker Town every other night. It’s not the highlight of my social life, and not only that, I’ve got my job’—or I did have. I shoved the thought away; it wasn’t something to worry about now—‘and other things’—like reading curse-cracking books. Yep, my life is that exciting. Of course, I could always do with a little less excitement right now—‘so the bags are convenient,’ I finished with a scowl.

‘Are you telling me you only indulge in blood and sex with Darius once a week?’

I stared at him in disbelief. Was he not listening to me or something? Or was this some sort of vamp pride thing? Or was he jealous? Nah, that was just wishful thinking—not that I wanted him jealous; his over- protectiveness was already difficult enough to deal with.

‘What is your problem with Darius?’ I demanded.

‘Answer me, Genevieve.’

‘No, I don’t only indulge in blood and sex with Darius once a week.’ There, chew on that nicely ambiguous answer, your Fanged Hotness.

A pinprick of rage flickered in his pupils, then it was gone. ‘How many times a week?’

Damn orders. ‘None,’ I growled.

Astonishment flashed over his face. ‘Why not, if you are happy to indulge so with me?’

Was he really that stupid? I narrowed my eyes. ‘What the hell’s with the twenty questions?’ And why the hell was he asking them? He was Head Fang: he had his spies all over Sucker Town … I could understand him not knowing about Mad Max’s secrets, but surely he had to know about me?

A perplexed line creased between his brows. ‘I am trying to understand why you are offering yourself to me, Genevieve.’

‘Fuck, Malik!’ I threw my hands in the air. ‘I want you. I desire you. I lust after you. My idiotic libido sits up and pants when you’re around. And it’s not like I can hide it: you’re a vamp, you’ve got super-senses, so you must have noticed.’

‘I am aware of how you react to me physically, Genevieve.’ His frown deepened. ‘But you care enough for Darius to take responsibility for his existence, and to put yourself in danger in order to save him. He is by all accounts very … talented, and yet you say you have not taken him as your lover. You have not taken any lovers among the fae either, and this suggests that you do not give yourself lightly, therefore the only conclusion I can come to is that despite your evident physical desire for me, you are not truly willing. I do not wish to take advantage of you.’

My mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Okay, this is just way too strange. One: no way am I going to take a lover from the fae, not with a fertility curse hanging over my head, and two: this seduction was all your idea. You started it, I just went along for the ride’—ha, ha, and wasn’t that a Freudian slip? Not that I was getting one—‘I did not come here to seduce you. I mean, why would I even think I could? It’s not like you’ve ever had a problem resisting either my body or my blood before. Or now.’

He opened his mouth—