I groaned as I woke, the chuckle of a smug Dragon asshole rumbling through my brain and making it rattle as my parched tongue clung to the roof of my mouth like cottonwool and I reached around blindly for a glass of water.
“Here.” Something hard and cold met my lips and I parted them to suck on the icicle like a dying woman, the cool water melting into my mouth and alleviating some of the self-inflicted issues I was currently suffering from.
“If this icicle looks like a dick, I’m going to be pissed,” I muttered around it before sucking on it again.
“I could make you one of those if you like?” Darius offered in a teasing tone. Then I could use it to-”
“Dude. Do I look like a woman wanting some double penetration with a side of frost bite to the vag in this moment?” I asked, snatching the icicle from his hand and cracking my eyes open as I continued to suck on it.
Darius tilted his head to one side as if he couldn’t decide on that and I slapped his arm, forcing myself to sit up with a groan.
“Okay, so perhaps not right now,” he conceded. “But maybe after you’ve drowned your hangover in greasy food…”
I smacked him again but my smirk turned somewhat flirtatious as I gave the idea a little more of my attention before shaking my head and banishing it. I’d learned that lesson the hard way - literally. Indulging any of his fantasies for more than eight seconds resulted in him playing them out on my body. And I wasn’t really complaining about that, but right now I needed to pee, eat and mentally process the level of shame I had exposed myself to last night.
There were memories of me and Lance crawling around under tables while trying to hide from Seth that kept playing through my head on repeat and I shuddered as I thought of the prank I’d almost played on him too. I mean, he totally deserved it for that time he peed on me, so I guessed I would have to call us even now, but he was likely still pretty pissed about it.
“You wanna skip our run this morning?” Darius asked as I got out of bed and started hunting for some clothes. I was wearing one of Darius’s shirts but my panties were long gone and I had some rather vivid memories of him bending me over the bed and making me scream for him after we stumbled back here last night, not to mention the ache between my thighs which he’d left behind as evidence. I was pretty sure he’d put my half crown from The Palace of Flames on his head for some of it too, laughing through my curses and making me come so hard I forgot to complain about it.
Honestly, if we’d met in the mortal realm, I probably would have had a rest schedule planned out for my vagina between rounds with him. But as I could heal that shit, I was good to go on demand instead and as my gaze fell on his bare chest and the icicle I’d abandoned on the bed, I started to give his suggestion some consideration.
No, Tory. Don’t let him tempt you back in before breakfast.
“Food first. Then the creepy map thing,” I said decisively. “We have shadow rifts to close up today.”
Geraldine had taken charge of the map of espial last night, telling me she would take the greatest care of it and saving me from having to be responsible for the thing, so I wasn’t complaining.
Darius drew his bottom lip between his teeth as he continued to watch me from the bed and I narrowed my eyes as I looked at him, sensing there was something he wasn’t saying.
“Spit it out, big man,” I demanded and his gaze snapped up from my legs to my eyes as he sighed.
“When we close those rifts, Lavinia and my father will be vulnerable at last,” he said. “Which means it will be time to strike at them.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” I teased.
“Roxy…I want you to agree to let me be the one who goes after Lionel.”
I frowned, the desire to see that lizard asshole’s head ripped off and laying at my feet rising in me fiercely for all I’d suffered at his hands, but as I opened my mouth to demand I get a shot at him, I hesitated. Yes, I’d spent months in the company of that twisted motherfucker and I’d suffered massively in that time, but Darius had endured a lifetime of that. Even my treatment at his father’s hands circled back to him really, Lionel had struck out at the people surrounding him to hurt him too. Me, Orion, Xavier, Catalina. He’d been suffering since the day he was born under the rule of that tyrant so was it really my place to try and take his death from him?
“And what would that make you if you were the one to kill the king?” I asked in a low voice because there was more to this than just figuring out which of us deserved the killing blow more.