Black Moon Draw(56)

I don’t want him to think of me the way everyone else does. The fleeting thought resounds deeply inside me, surprising me by its force. Why should I care what the Shadow Knight thinks?

Because I like him a little bit more than I want to consider.

“If you want hair on your blossoms, so be it. If you do not, so be it. A battle-witch answers to no one.” His response is soft, still amused, his tone warmer than I’m used to hearing from him.

“Thank you,” I say with some vindication. Now stop talking about my body. I stretch my neck back and work on calming down.

“Though a man likes not to be choked by hair when he pleasures a woman with his mouth.”

The image of his glorious body naked between my legs, gazing at me with the intensity he often displays in battle, preparing to unleash his tongue on the most sensitive part of my body . . . it stirs a primal part of me, one much stronger and instinctive than a high school crush.

Fanning myself, I start to think I’ll never be able to calm down.

“This Jason . . . you care for him?” he asks casually.

“I did. Why?”

“You think of him often,” he replies. “Besides, I have spoken to no one in four days. This place is driving me mad.”

“So you’re in my business because you’re bored. That’s fantastic,” I say sarcastically and rest a hand on my hip, unimpressed with his explanation. “One day, someone will genuinely give a shit.”

“I cared for you for four days, did I not?”

And saw me completely naked. “That’s different. You want something from me, but you don’t really care what I think or feel or . . .” Embarrassed by the words and aware I’m inviting criticism I can’t handle today, I shut up.

The jackass who murders whole armies is listening intently. “Jason was not good to you,” he observes.

This room is way too small for the two of us. “I didn’t enter another world to talk about my horrible luck with men!”

“Mayhap if you appreciated your unique gifts rather than pitied yourself, you would not have settled for a man who sees you as disappointing.” His gaze is traveling down my body as he speaks, which makes me think he’s talking about physical gifts.

I can’t summon a response. Is he really giving me relationship advice by telling me to stop wallowing in my misery?

He’s not the first person to tell me this. My mother did, too. The only person who always found me beautiful, no matter what, she used to tell me I had to stop settling for men who didn’t think of me in the same way. She liked Jason but still told me to find someone who didn’t make me cry once a week.

If I don’t put some space between us, I’m going to throw myself out the tower window. “How do we get out of here?”

“Can you fly?”

“No.”

He’s opening the windows. “Can you swim better than you ride a horse?”

“Maybe a little.”

Perplexed by his questions, I return to the other side of the prison and peer out of a window. I noticed the sky before; this time, I look down.

“Holy shit. How is this possible?” We’re in a floating tower over a bay deep enough that its waters are almost black, the nearest beaches a hefty mile swim. There are five more towers evenly spaced and suspended between the beach and us.

“Magic put us here. It must free us,” he answers.

“But we don’t . . .”

He gives me a knowing look and crosses his arms, exposing the roped lengths of his forearms and the strain of his biceps inside the sleeves of his tunic.

There’s no door at all to the room, a ceiling supported by wooden beams and a floor of massive blocks covered by rugs. I don’t think we’ll survive if we jump to the sea below. It’s too far.

“Maybe there’s some entrance in the floor. A trap door leading to some elevator or something we can’t see.” I drop to my knees and pull up one rug. I’m starting to feel a familiar sense of panic build and dig my fingers into the space between two stones to see if anything moves. No matter how hard I try, I’m doomed to fail him.

The thought pierces me to the core and I sit back.

“’Tis the same for me every day.”

Not expecting such a human emotion from him, I sit back and face the Shadow Knight. He doesn’t look anywhere as upset as I am about it. More . . . contemplative.

The instinct warning me about getting too involved is screaming again.

This time, I ignore it. “How can you say that?” I ask with some frustration. “You have so much power and strength. No one can stop you. You fail at nothing and win every battle.”

“In three days, my realm vanishes.” There’s a mocking note in his voice, along with bitterness. “And you have no power.”

“But that’s not our faults,” I protest.

The Shadow Knight draws closer, seating himself on a stool near me. I automatically suck in a breath of his dark, heady scent and wait with some reticence for whatever otherworldly explanation he’ll offer up. There’s no part of him capable of failing. I’m almost angry at him for claiming to know what it feels like to have the world reject him at every turn.

He pulls a second stool before him and pats it.

I sit on it obediently. We’re close enough that my knees are between his, our eyes on the same level his elbows on his thighs.