Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)(11)
“You need more than one, Sloane.”
“But this particular friend? This random Rowan guy? …Really?”
I can still hear the chiming cadence of Lark’s giggle as she glanced over at my confusion with a gentle smile. “Having another friend who can understand you, the real you, is maybe not a bad thing,” she said with a shrug, her grin untarnished by the scrutiny of my unwavering stare. “You haven’t jumped from the moving vehicle. We’re still heading to the airport. So yeah, I guess this random Rowan guy is your friend now.”
Maybe I should have jumped from the car.
I groan as I slide further into the depths of my chair. “Her rationale didn’t even make logical sense,” I say to the cat as I replay that conversation with Lark, the feline glaring back at me with simmering, judgemental fury.
“Trying to consume its soul, Blackbird?”
I drop my e-reader as I startle, turning toward the source of the subtle Irish accent with a hand clasped to my heart. “Jesus Christ,” I hiss as Rowan emerges from the shadows by the door with a smirk. My breath stops short when reality hits me that he’s here, really here. Rowan looks exactly the same as he did a year ago. I might look a little better than our first encounter, having not spent the last few days in a disgusting cage as a body putrefied a few feet away. I’m not sure if he would care that much about my lack of makeup or knotted hair or chapped lips, considering he spent so much time staring at my tits. The memory makes me blush, and not out of embarrassment.
I swallow down a sudden burst of nerves. “Maybe I should consume the cat’s soul. Mine just left my body.”
“I figured that was how you acquired your freckles. Stealing souls.”
“I see you’re just as hilarious as the first time we met.” I roll my eyes and move to pick up my e-reader but Rowan gets to it first. “Hand it over, pretty boy,” I say as he gives me a magnetic grin that fills my senses and douses my worries with a different kind of anxiety. The straight scar through his lip seems to brighten as his smile turns rakish.
“What does my nervous little Blackbird like to read, I wonder?” he teases as he waves the device at me.
A dismissive huff leaves my lips, even though his words crawl into my veins and inject my cheeks with crimson heat. “Monster porn, clearly,” I reply. Rowan laughs and I manage to snatch the device from his grip, which only makes him laugh harder. “The sentient dragonman has two dicks and he knows how to use them. A forked tongue too. And a very talented tail. So don’t make fun.”
“Give me that back. My TV is broken in my room and that’s the kind of entertainment I need in my life.”
“Get fucked, Butcher.” I slide the e-reader beneath my left ass cheek and give Rowan a lethal glare. “Hold on a second. Your TV is broken? When did you get here?”
He shrugs and lets his backpack drop to the floor with a dull thud as he gives me a sly smile, folding his frame into the chair next to mine. “About forty-five minutes ago. You must’ve been in your room. I left mine to find some booze. I’m your next door neighbor, by the way.”
“Fantastic,” I deadpan with an eye roll, which only makes him grin.
Rowan unzips the bag, opening it just wide enough to show the bottle of red wine that rests within.
“It’s two in the morning. Aren’t all the stores closed?”
“Not the kitchen.”
“The kitchen’s closed too.”
“Is it...? My bad.” Rowan pulls the bottle from his bag and cracks the screw-top lid, his gaze fused to mine as he takes a long sip. My eyes narrow to slits when he winks. “Don’t tell me you’re upset about some petty theft.”
“No,” I scoff. Gooseflesh erupts on my arm in the brief moment when our fingers interlace around the cool glass as I pry the bottle from his hand. “I’m upset that you’re taking too long to pass the bottle over. And you’re getting your boy germs all over it. You’re probably trying to infect me so I’ll be sick in my room with your manpox while you go and win our little competition.”
“Manpox.” Rowan snorts as I take a long sip and pass the bottle back. He keeps hold of my glare as he takes a drink, the smirk in his expression still gleaming in his eyes. “Well,” he says, presenting the bottle with a flourish as he hands it to me, “I’ve got your girl cooties now, so we’re even.”
I try not to smile, but it happens anyway, and as soon as that grin sneaks into my lips it brightens Rowan’s eyes as though he’s reflecting my amusement back to me. Not just that, but amplifying it.
As I settle back into my seat, I realize that it’s as though we only saw each other yesterday. It’s so easy with him, even when I don’t want it to be, just like when we sat in the diner a year ago. Despite how hard I’d tried to force my attention elsewhere, it kept coming back to him. And it’s no different now. He lures me in, a pinprick of steady light in the static darkness.
“Any ideas who we’re here for?” Rowan asks, breaking me away from the thoughts that have swept me away. I take a sip of wine and eye him with wariness.
“Sure.”
“By ‘sure’, you mean ‘not at all’, right?”
“Pretty much. You?”
“Nope.”