Taken by the Blood God (Devil Springs #4)

Chapter 23

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Minerva

I could hear two voices through the fog of sleep. They were both male and familiar. With my eyes still closed, I listened.

“Your love for her makes you weak, brother.” The deep voice was harsh and accented. I knew who was speaking, but the voices sounded strange.

“Love is not a weakness,” the other man said.

I realized the reason they sounded strange wasn’t their voices or even their accents. They weren’t speaking English. I didn’t recognize the language, yet, somehow, I still understood them. I didn’t move, knowing that they were only a few feet away from me as they continued to talk.

“You make decisions based on what she would or wouldn’t like, Tal. Decisions you would never make for yourself.”

“She is the best of us, Davi. We both know that.”

It was Talant and Davian. They were arguing about a woman. No, not just any woman. Me . Though they didn’t call me by name, I knew they were talking about me.

Davian scoffed. “The best of us? We are far more powerful than she is.”

Talant didn’t reply aloud, but his brother continued.

“Don’t shake your head at me. We are stronger because we take what is offered to us.”

“That is not the only way to accumulate power, brother. Cassia knows that. Do not underestimate her.”

Cassia? Who the hell was Cassia? The name was vaguely familiar, as though I should remember it, but as I grasped for those memories, they shifted and vanished like smoke.

“Fine. Forget who is more powerful then. She doesn’t love you, Tal. Not the way you love her. She has told you that more than once.”

“I know.”

His words hurt. Not only because he admitted that he loved this Cassia, but also because it was clear that it hurt him to admit she didn’t love him the way he loved her. Whatever relationship they had, he wanted it to be something more.

“Then, why are you refusing to leave her and go your own way? There are plenty of willing women who would do anything you asked. Even goddesses would offer whatever your heart desired just to see you smile.”

“She makes me better,” Talant admitted. “For her, I want to be better. I see the world differently when we are together, and I do not want to go back to who I once was.”

“Fine,” Davian said. The single word was rife with frustration. “I give up. I am not going to stay here and watch you follow her around like a lost puppy. When you come to your senses, you will be able to find me.”

I lay still, listening to their voices fade as they left the room.

Once they were gone I opened my eyes expecting to see rough walls and rustic furniture. Instead, I lay on a soft mattress covered in a finely woven blanket and silky sheets. Strange.

I blinked, and suddenly reality snapped into place. I was home in my own bed, sprawled across Talant’s bare chest, one of my legs thrown across his with my knee resting on the mattress between his thighs.

Why had I expected to see a primitive single room structure with hand-hewn wooden furniture? The dream had been peculiar. Not because of its content, but because it felt so real . Not like a dream at all. More like a…memory.

For some reason, the steady thump of Talant’s heart beneath my ear didn’t comfort me. I rolled away from him, facing the window that looked out over my side yard. I noticed the curtain was closed and realized Talant must have done it during the night. They had been open when I went to sleep.

Talant rolled over, curling his body around mine. His arm settled across my waist, pulling me as close as possible. It was as if he wanted maximum contact, even in his sleep.

For such a powerful creature, his need to remain close to me surprised me. And it humanized him. If I viewed him as arrogant and aloof, it was easy to keep the distance between us. But, when he vowed that he belonged to me, when he made himself vulnerable, the wall I’d built between us cracked and began to crumble.

No, I was lying to myself. I’d been melting toward him since the day he brought me home. I’d made sure he had clothes and toiletries. I made him cake and cookies. Despite how angry I’d been about his brother and how they’d treated my niece, I wanted to show him what he’d been missing in his time asleep—how it felt to have someone care.

My thoughts went back to my dream. My gifts were usually geared toward the future. I could see things unfold, threads that wove together, spreading far and wide like a spider’s web. But I wondered if maybe the opposite side of that coin was the past. Was I seeing Talant’s past? If so, why?

He freely admitted that he was not proud of who he had been before he’d trapped himself within that mountain, that he was much more like his brother.

If Davian, now and from my dream, was any indication of what Talant had been like, I was glad I hadn’t known him.

I had many flaws, but the worst was my ability to hold grudges. It was something I worked on since Ally had come to live with me. I didn’t want to hold someone’s past mistakes against them, especially if they were truly penitent.

Everything changed. Even people. They could learn and grow. At least, if they wanted to. Based on Talant’s words and actions since Ally woke him, he regretted his past and his statements that he wanted to be different were sincere. It was much easier to give him the benefit of a doubt since I didn’t know him as he once was.

Talant’s arm squeezed me tighter, stealing my breath. “Your thoughts are very heavy, little witch,” he murmured against my shoulder.

“Are you listening to them?” I asked, wondering if he possessed the talent of telepathy. I hoped not. I didn’t like the notion that he could pluck the thoughts from my mind whenever he wanted.

“No, but I swear I can feel the weight of them against my skin.” He reached up and swept the hair off my neck, placing his lips against my throat. “Are you having regrets?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I answered honestly. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“What were you thinking about?”

I decided to be honest. A lie of omission would be easier, but I’d never taken the easy way out in my life.

“What you were like before,” I answered.

Talant froze, his body tightening behind mine. Then, his hand went to my shoulder, rolling me over onto my back. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at me.

“Why?”

The room was darker than usual with the blinds closed, so I couldn’t see his face clearly. Only the gleam of his bronze eyes pierced the shadows.

“Because I wondered what you were like, if you were as bad as you insinuate.”

Talant inhaled sharply. “Why would you care?”

I shifted so that I was turned more toward him. Turning my head was giving me a crick in my neck.

“I don’t really have an answer for that,” I admitted, “other than to say that I just do.”

The tension in the room ratcheted up a few notches. “I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t worth knowing then, little witch. It’s not a lie. You would have despised me even more than you do now.”

“I don’t despise you,” I argued, interrupting whatever he’d been about to say. “You wouldn’t be in my bed if I did.”

His hand crept across my waist, coming to rest on my hip. His thumb stroked a path over my hipbone, back and forth.

“Who I was then is…” He paused, searching for the right words, “long dead. At least that’s how it feels to me now. It’s been so long since I left that part of my life behind that I feel like I’m completely different now.”

I could see that. He’d been beneath the mountain over a thousand years. While he hadn’t admitted it to me yet, I knew that he’d seen what was happening to the world as he slept. He would have been much more confused when he woke if he hadn’t.

I lifted my hand, cupping his bicep. Slowly, I swept my palm up over his shoulder to his neck. The muscles beneath my fingers were tight, as though he expected me to push him away. My thumb rested on the curve of his jaw just below his ear.

“So, there’s nothing about your past that you’d want to share with me?” I asked.

I could feel the muscles of his jaw clench beneath my thumb. He was silent for a long moment, that tiny muscle jumping beneath my touch. Finally, he answered, “No.”

There was a sinking sensation in my chest. As though he could feel it, Talant added, “But only because I can’t bear for you to look at me the way you once did.”

“How did I look at you? And when?”

“Like you wished you could bury me back beneath the mountain and leave me there forever.” His tone was dry and a little amused when he continued, “And you only stopped looking at me like that last night when you looked up and saw that I’d followed you into the woods.”

I didn’t know what to say to him. All this time I felt like he was looking right through me, yet he had no idea how I really felt.

“I don’t wish you were still beneath the mountain,” I finally admitted. “Though, there have been times in the past few weeks that I wouldn’t have minded if you spent a couple of days back in that cave.”

He chuckled. The sound moved through me in a warm wave. He hugged me closer, as though I were his favorite teddy bear. With a light touch, I placed my fingers on the back of his hand where it rested on my hip.

“Most of the time I don’t mind having you here,” I continued.

My words made him laugh again. “Stop, you’re making me blush.”

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. When he was like this, I understood why my niece liked Talant so much. He was funny. And, in rough sort of way, kind of sweet.

“I’m glad you don’t think last night was a mistake,” he said.

“I believe I said I wasn’t sure yet,” I corrected.

“That’s not what I heard.” Talant lowered his head to place his lips against mine in a barely-there kiss.

“Ah, but you always hear what you want to hear,” I retorted.

Our lips brushed as I spoke, and our breath mingled. When he hummed in response to my statement, I felt the vibrations all the way down into my chest. My lips tingled, and my chest grew tight.

Even if I hadn’t witnessed the power of his magic, the way my body responded to his touch would have made me believe Talant was a god.

“I heard something else, too,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“That you need me to convince you that it wasn’t a mistake.”

I couldn’t stop the smile that curved my mouth. “I’m always open to a compelling argument.”

“Hmmm.” Talant’s lips moved down my jaw to my throat, landing on the spot an inch or two below my ear that made me shiver as he kissed it. “I guess I should make my case, then,” he murmured.

Talant rolled over on top of me, his lips and tongue blazing a path down my body. His hands moved to my inner thighs, shoving them up and apart.

“Are you ready to hear it?” he asked.

I jumped when his fangs nipped the muscle of my thigh. “Hear what?”

“My argument.”

His tongue came out to flick my clit, making my body twitch.

“I’m listening.”

I felt his smile against my pussy before he opened his mouth and began convincing me.