The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(72)

“Ooo… we’re using good manners. Am I in trouble?” I asked, forcing a playful smile to my face.

He stared at me with the slightest of smirks, a tiny huff of humorless breath escaping him as he saw right through my bullshit.

“That depends. Do you want me to punish you, Witchling?” he asked, reaching down to grip the edge of his desk. His grip tightened until the wood groaned, and I shifted in my chair.

“Am I going to enjoy it?” I asked, my breath shuddering with fake laughter.

He tipped his head to the side as he watched me, releasing the desk with a single hand to pick up the knife he must have taken from the werewolf I’d thrown it at. He toyed with the blade, using it to poke the thumb of his other hand. Blood welled from the wound, and he reached forward to drag it over my lip. I swallowed, resisting the urge to lick my lips.

“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.

I swallowed, choking on my laughter. “You’re holding a knife,” I said pointedly, my gaze dropping to the sharp, pointy thing I very much feared would be heading for my heart soon enough.

He chuckled, placing it on the desk behind him as he leaned toward me. “When have I ever hurt you? We both know I’m far more likely to bend you over this desk and fuck you until you cannot breathe. Maybe then you will understand the fear I felt when Kairos informed me you’d gone into the woods,” he growled, his voice dropping lower as all pretense of civility dropped off his face. That guarded mask of humanity that he so carefully wore fled, revealing the brutal monster waiting beneath his skin.

“Is that the part I would enjoy?” I asked, placing my hands in my lap.

He studied the motion, the reserved action that was supposed to be how I’d behaved during the entirety of our seduction. According to my father, men preferred subservient, quiet women.

Then there was me.

Gray sighed, leaning forward with a hand on each arm of the chair I sat in. He moved fluidly, his body sliding through the space between us until he stood, leaning into my face as I sat back fully. He bent at the waist, caging me into my seat until all I could see was him.

“Would you like to find out, love?”

I swallowed, drawing my bottom lip between my teeth. I couldn’t function with him so close, with the way his gaze examined every corner of my face, as if he could see inside me.

See the doubt Susannah had planted.

“What did she say to you?” he asked when I didn’t respond.

I couldn’t find the words to answer his sexual advances, because even though it made things clench low in my stomach, my brain wasn’t quite as on board with the idea.

“She came to me with a portrait of my aunt. She knew who I was,” I said, swallowing as I gave him just enough of the truth to attempt to disguise my deception.

“And how did that lead to you making the incredibly stupid decision to go into the woods on your own?” he asked, the steel of his eyes glimmering coldly.

“She told me she would allow me to live if I left Hollow’s Grove and never came back. I didn’t want to come here in the first place. Why would I hesitate to leave?” I asked.

“If Susannah wanted you to leave the school, why wouldn’t she have arranged for someone to drive you to town?” Gray asked.

I swallowed as I tried to think of what I could say to that. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might have arranged transport for me if I hadn’t been in the process of burying her alive.

“Maybe she didn’t want me to survive, and letting those things take care of me in the woods was a way to not get her hands dirty,” I said, echoing the same thoughts I’d already had on my own. There was something so tragic about thinking the only family I had would dispose of me like that.

Tragic, but unsurprising.

“Hmmm.” Gray straightened, releasing the arms of the chair. “Kairos,” he called. The door to Gray’s office opened as if the other man had been lurking on the other side, waiting for Gray to summon him. Kairos stepped in, shoving his hands into his pockets as he observed us. “Tell me what you saw.”

Kairos glanced at me, and there was an apology in that stare as he winced, turning to hold Gray’s inquisitive look. “Susannah followed Willow into the gardens. A few moments later, Willow sprinted into the woods.”

“And what of Susannah? Where is she now?” Gray asked, settling his deep stare on me.

My thoughts raced, my palms sweating as I picked at my fingers in my lap.

“Why were you watching me?” I asked, turning to look at Kairos over my shoulder more fully.

“Because I asked him to. I protect what is mine, even if it means preventing you from making stupid fucking decisions that threaten your own safety,” Gray snapped, leveling me with a glare that I swore could have made anyone wither on the spot.

“Bring Susannah to me. I want to know exactly what she said to Willow in that garden. Clearly, I am not going to get the truth from my witchling,” he said, ordering Kairos to do his bidding.

The other man shifted on his feet, and my eyes drifted closed. I knew what was coming next.

“That’s the problem, though. Nobody can find Susannah. She never left the gardens from what I saw,” Kairos said.

The weight of his gaze on the side of my face made me want to shrink back inside myself. There was a moment of silence, a beat and a pause where nobody dared to speak or move.