Page 55 of Noctis

“No. No killing. No matter what he says or does, you don’t kill him.”

“Because you still like him?”

I sensed I was walking a very thin line here, and that my control—and I used that word tentatively—would only extend so far. So, where I might normally have made a joke as a defense mechanism, I didn’t. “Any feelings I had for him withered when I found out he’d been sleeping with Remy, and they completely went up in flames when he changed the locks and refused to leave my house. But I want him alive. I want him to spend years realizing how badly he fucked up.”

“Ah, suffering. I understand that.” He sounded pleased with the idea.

“Yeah, suffering. Death is too good for him.”

“I won’t kill him. I want him to suffer too.”

Chapter Nineteen

Caligo

“So you can walk through walls?” Rowan asked as we stood outside the house he’d told me was his. He’d insisted I wear clothes and keep my hood up. The oversized sweatshirt he’d bought concealed most of my face as long as no one looked too closely. Given that it was the middle of the night and we’d seen only one person since getting out of the taxi, that seemed unlikely.

Clothes were strange. Not unpleasantly strange. Just unnecessary. I held my hand up in front of my face and stared at my gloved fingers. “I can’t walk through walls. I can disappear and reappear somewhere else.”

“Neat trick. I wish I could do that.” Rowan pulled my hand down when I continued to stare at my fingers. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I’ve never worn gloves before. Or shoes. Or underwear. Or―”

“Okay... you don’t need to list them all. We’re meant to be blending in, and humans don’t spend ten minutes staring at their hands.”

“It wasn’t ten minutes. It was one minute and forty-eight seconds.”

Rowan laughed. I liked his laugh. Not as much as I liked his cock, but I liked it. “It’s called exaggeration.”

“It was incorrect.”

“Jesus, you’re a Vulcan.”

I ran the word through my head, searching for similar ones. Vulture. Volcano. Falcon. None of them made semantic sense. “What’s a Vulcan?”

“Never mind. It’s a TV reference. I’m guessing you don’t watch much TV.”

“Not really.”

Rowan turned back to the house. His increased heart rate, slightly raised temperature, and general restlessness indicated that he was nervous. “You remember the plan, right?”

“Appear in my true form. Tell him he’s been a naughty boy and that he’ll be dragged to hell if he doesn’t relinquish the house.”

Rowan gave me a strange look. “I didn’t say ‘naughty boy,’ and I said nothing about hell.”

“I’m paraphrasing.”

“And what aren’t you going to do?”

“Break anything.”

He let out a frustrated sigh. “Now is not the time to develop a sense of humor. Seriously, Cal. What aren’t you going to do?”

“Cal,” I repeated, tasting the name on my tongue.

Rowan cleared his throat. “Sorry. You didn’t give me permission to shorten your name.”

“You can shorten my name. I like it. It’s intimate.”