16

I didn’t have any clue how to contain the poisonous gas, but maybe I could make it change form. I’d read about switching-state spells in one of the books on witchcraft Nero had assigned me. Of course, books were one thing and real life was another. Just because I’d read about the spell, that didn’t mean I could do it. But I had to try.

“Give me your Fire Salt and Sea Breeze,” I said to Jace.

He pulled two vials out of his potions kit, one filled with tiny red crystals and one with fine blue sand. I poured them together onto my palm, willing their magic to mix. The combined mixture began to pop, tickling my skin. I tossed a handful at the nearest poison puff. Magic crackled, and the gas thickened into a thick, snot-like goo that dropped out of the air, smacking the pavement.

I poured and mixed and tossed, taking that cloud out, piece by piece. By the time the Legion containment crew arrived, neither Jace nor I had a single grain of Fire Salt or Sea Breeze left.

“You didn’t leave anything for us,” Nerissa said as the last clot of poisonous goo hit the ground.

“Sure, we did. Those people need your help.” I pointed at the shifters. “They’ve been poisoned.”

Nerissa waved the healers over to take care of the shifters. “That was quick thinking,” she said, glancing down at the forest of goo that covered the sidewalk in front of the building. “How ever did you think of changing the poison from gas to solid to stop it from spreading?”

“I read it in a book.”

I looked around. The healers were already taking care of the poisoned shifters. I glanced over as the silver sheen faded from their skin. That had been close. Whatever this poison was, it was designed to aggressively kill shifters. It was by luck alone that they’d all survived the attack.

First vampires, then us, and now shifters. The witches were targeting us one by one, and we still had no clue why. I knew it was the witches, just as I knew that when Nerissa analyzed the poison, she’d find it was yet another super-poison made only within the gilded gates of the New York University of Witchcraft.

I was tired—really tired. Igniting the magic in those potions had drained me of everything I had. I needed a nap, not another crime scene.

And I definitely don’t need this, I thought as Nero came around the corner. He headed straight for me. I was so not in the mood to deal with him right now.

He stopped in front of me. “We need to talk.” Then he turned and walked back the way he’d come.

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him right now, so I followed him. Neither of us said a word the whole walk back to the Legion. The silence held until we stepped into his office and he closed the door behind us.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to consider the consequences of him actually caring about me, so I brushed him off. “I’m fine.”

“Stop,” he said when I moved toward the door.

I pivoted around. “I just saw a lot of people nearly die. Do you have to punish me now?”

“Punish you? For what?”

“For last night. For sneaking around the witch university without your permission. You said you were going to punish me.”

“Yes, I did say that.”

“I’m really tired. Can’t I just take the pushups later?” I pleaded.

“You just saved the lives of over fifty people. Let’s call it even.”

I blinked in surprise. “So you’re not going to punish me?”

“I am not going to punish you,” he confirmed.

“Oh. Good. So, then why am I here?”

“Because I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“You are angry with me,” he said.

“I’m not.” I resisted the urge to cross my fingers behind my back.

Nero wasn’t fooled. “Don’t lie to me.”

I sighed. “What do you want me to say?”

“Start with the truth.”

I let out a strained laugh. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” I began to turn away.

“We’re not done,”

“What is this all about?” I demanded. “Is it professional or personal?”

“Personal.”

“Then I’m leaving. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“You forget your place.” A warning note hummed at the surface of his words.

“No, you forget yours,” I snapped. “This isn’t how this works. You can’t just order me to listen to you about whatever personal thing you want to get off your chest. I’m leaving.” I turned to leave, but his hand closed around my wrist. “Let go.”

“Leda.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. You can’t just ‘Leda’ me and then everything is all better.” I tried to shake him off, but the man had an iron grip. “Let me go, Nero,” I bit out.

“Talk to me.”

He looked irked at being denied what he wanted. Good. I was pissed as hell at him right now. He couldn’t just hold me here. I would have swung a punch at his perfect, obnoxious face except I wasn’t even allowed to hit him. That would get me into trouble. I unclenched my fist.

He realized what I was thinking—or he’d just read my thoughts. “I absolve you from any repercussions of hitting me.”

He didn’t have to say it twice. I swung a punch at him—a fast, hard punch. He caught my fist in his hand.

“If you can hit me,” he added.

The arrogant bastard. I tried to hit him again, but he was too fast. He was always too fast. It was one of his most annoying qualities, especially right now. Would it kill him to stand still and let me get in a punch? I growled in frustration.

“Are you done yet?” he asked with infuriating calmness.

“Not even close.” I aimed for his head, and he captured my other hand. “I’m just waiting for the right opening.”

“Take your time.”

“You…” I pushed against his hand. “…are…” I made a futile attempt to kick his shin. “…so…” Futile or not, I tried again—and failed. “…aggravating.” I growled at him.

“So I’ve been told.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a hard, tortured laugh. “When are you going to let me go?”

“After we’ve talked about what is going on between us.”

“There is nothing going on between us. Nothing. You made that perfectly clear last night.”

“Last night was a mistake.”

“This whole thing was a mistake. You. Me. Me thinking we could…” An angry noise buzzed in my mouth.

“We could what?” he said quietly.

“It doesn’t matter. This could never work.”

“Last night was a mistake,” he repeated. “Basanti found the fairies. They were so excited to go on a double date with two soldiers of the Legion of Angels.”

Why the hell was he telling me this?

“All of us have a little of the vampire in us, Leda. We don’t have to drink blood to survive, but that doesn’t mean the hunger doesn’t hit us too. Lately, I’ve been feeling this hunger, this growing hunger. Basanti told me I’m too wound up, that I need to relax.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “In fact, don’t. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’m wound up because of you,” he told me, his thumb rubbing the inside of my wrist, tracing circles across my veins.

I closed my eyes. “I can’t listen to this.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t what?” I asked, opening my eyes.

“Act on that hunger last night. Because it wasn’t for that fairy. It was for you.”

I felt the fight in me go out like a light. My muscles went liquid.

“When I saw you there, the pain in your eyes, the jealousy—”

“Thinking a bit highly of yourself, are you?”

“You aren’t the only one,” he told me. “Jealousy is a merciless fiend.”

“Kind of like an angel,” I muttered.

“When I saw you leave the office for lunch with Fireswift, I nearly intervened.”

Translation: he’d nearly lost it and attacked Jace. I could see a hint of that madness burning in his eyes now.

“Jace is just a friend.”

“Friends with a Legion brat?” He leaned in, his mouth spreading into a smile so delicious I could hardly resist the temptation to steal a taste.

“Yes, friends. You should try it sometime.”

“Being your friend?”

“It sure beats being enemies.”

He moved forward, and the room suddenly felt very small. “You shouldn’t have been there with Fireswift. You should have been there with me.”

I backed away. “You aren’t interested in going out to lunch with me.”

“No, the things I want to do to you cannot be done in public.” His mouth dipped to kiss the underside of my wrist. Heat cascaded through my body like a burning river, searing everything it touched. “You don’t know what you’ve done to me, Leda.”

My retreat came to an abrupt end when the back of my legs bumped against his desk. In that moment, my mind flashed back to the last time we’d been alone in his office. I’d tossed my panties at his feet. His eyes flickered down to my legs. A slow, sexy smile spread across his lips, as though he were remembering it too.

“I’m not so easy,” I said in clear contradiction to that memory.

“You want me.”

“No.” My body betrayed me, negating my denial.

“Look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly don’t want me, then I will leave.” His mouth quirked. “I won’t even handcuff you to my desk this time.”

Trying to calm the rush of heat in my cheeks—and everywhere else—I met his eyes. “Nero, I don’t…” The words died on my tongue as soon as I saw my own longing reflected in his eyes. A hard, cruel ache twisted inside of me. “I can’t.” I slouched in defeat.

He lowered his mouth dangerously close to mine. “I thought not.” His breath melted against my lips.

“Yes, I want you. But that doesn’t mean we should—”

His mouth came down hard and heavy on mine, drowning my protest. His tongue slipped past my lips, ravaging the inside of my mouth with a hunger that was as delicious as it was deadly. The taste of him shot a sudden, merciless wave of pleasure through me that made my knees collapse out from under me. His hands lowered to my hips, catching my fall.

“Wait,” I said, stopping his hand before it wandered lower.

He pulled back, but only far enough to tease me with the absence of his lips. All I wanted was to pull him against me and lose myself in this moment.

“Nero,” I said slowly. If I moved my lips too much, they would touch his. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to resist kissing him again—and once that happened, I wouldn’t be able to stop. “Yes, I want you. But I don’t want to be just another of your thousands of lovers.”

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t bother to keep his lips still. Every brush of them against mine was pure agony.

“Captain Somerset told me of your history,” I said.

“She exaggerated.”

“About you breaking their hearts?”

“About how many there were. It certainly wasn’t thousands.”

The perfectly casual way that he said it made my heart sink to my stomach. “Nero, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not like you. I can’t just be intimate with someone and not feel something. And I can’t afford to feel for you, to have my heart broken. I have to save my brother. I have to worry about gaining the magic I need to find him. And if we do this, you will break my heart. Not today perhaps, but it will happen. You are an angel. And I am… I don’t even know what I am anymore. But I feel mortal. I feel human. You would grow bored of me and my pesky humanity. And then that would be it. So I have to end this before that happens, before this is tearing me up even more than it already is.”

I kissed him once softly on his lips, then I slid off his desk and hurried toward the door. And this time, he didn’t try to stop me.