Hey Everyone!
So, I'm very excited! I get to do an interview with Lit's own JazCullen! What?! Crazy, right? Check out my profile page for more info about it. I'll also be doing two Author Spotlights this week! I'm beyond excited. Now here is the next chapter, and this is by far one of my favorite chapters. After this one, my chess game starts moving rapidly. You've met all my characters, my kings and queens and pawns, now let's watch them move. But keep this is mind: who is moving the pieces?
Awh, I just like messing with everyone. But seriously, I hope you enjoy!
-Rosi
***
Grim paced the length of their bedroom like a caged lion. "Give me one good reason you won't marry me."
Nina was on the bed, laying on her side with her ankles crossed and a book under her nose. Candlelight played against the sheer red curtains surrounding their bed, bounced off the ancient carvings in the dark wood frame, and painted Nina in a soft pink light.
Grim loved how she looked in his bed, in his room, in his home. She fit in the castle. Surrounded by tapestries, candles, and furniture older than he was, she fit. It was the way her feet hit the stone floor, dancing around places where the stones dipped and shifted unevenly. It was the way her fingers traced the edges of the paintings and tapestries, eyes gorging on the scenes depicted, curiosity turning her chestnut eyes a deeper chocolate.
Curling up with her on one of the chaises in his library and listening to her read, answering her endless questions, pulling her down and making love to her when he didn't want to hear anything but her cries and moans of pleasure.
She fit him. He knew she did. He just needed to make her see that, make her understand.
Grim watched Nina look up from the novel and roll her eyes at him. He thought he might just snap.
They'd been fighting about his desire to marry her for weeks now. Grim had offered her the world—his world, but she'd repeatedly shot him down, continuing with the 'no future here' nonsense.
His power crackled in the air with his anger, but Nina seemed to barely recognize it. Maybe she'd gotten used to it. After all, the only time he seemed to be unable to control himself was around her. She drove him absolutely insane. One minute he wanted to kiss her and screw her up against the wall, and the very next he wanted to shake and scream at her.
Grim watched Nina lever herself up on the crimson and gold counterpane, cross her legs, and flip the book over onto the bed. "I'll give you three."
Holding her hand up, she began to tick off her fingers as she listed the reasons. "One: I have a contract with Uri that says I have to go back in three months. Two: I'm pretty sure you keeping me here as your wife is going to piss a whole bunch of reapers off, most of all your actual fiancée. Three: I have accepted that I have to die, because I'm human."
Grim stopped at the foot of the bed and glowered at her. "You're being idiotic."
He watched Nina's jaw lock and her eyes blaze with fury. Grim flexed his fist as he watched her calmly crawl from the bed.
Where does she think she's going?
"When you've calmed down, you can come see me." The words were forced out through gritted teeth as she shoved her feet into a pair of shoes and sailed past him. "I'll be back in my room."
A flick of his power sent her careening back onto the bed. Another flick had her spread wide, held in place by invisible restraints. With Nina restrained, the beast within him—that wild part that decided to break all the rules and screw the consequences—relaxed.
"Let me go, Grim." Nina bit off, straining her body against the restraints. "You're being an asshole again."
Grim snorted and came around the bed to sit near her. She was beautiful when she was angry, fire sparking her eyes, skin flushed and tight. So similar to the way she looked when he made love to her. "Half the time I'm an asshole. The other half I'm an uncaring dick."
It was true; which was why he was trying to change. Nina made him want to change. She made him want things he wasn't supposed to want. "I'm trying to be the man you need,
Amica.
I'm trying."
Nina stopped struggling and looked at him with those big chestnut-brown eyes, so intelligent, always seeing more than he wanted her to see. Then she blew out a gusty sigh and most of the tension that had been holding her left.
"I know you are, Grim." Her voice was soft. "I know you are."
The conversation with his parents had made him realize something, while seeing Felicia and speaking with the council had set it in stone. This was his—immortal—life! Politics aside, he saw how his parents lived; his father in a quick descent into madness and his mother hating her life and being miserable all the time. Honor, duty, and political alliances had driven them to that. Grim refused to follow the same path, refused to sacrifice centuries of living for an alliance that wouldn't even hold.
His feelings for Nina would hold. That, Grim knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, was true. He might be a possessive asshole, haunted by ghosts, but he needed Nina—needed her like he'd needed nothing else.
"Marry me." The words were spoken softly as he flicked his power and released her.
A soft palm caressed his cheek, and Grim grasped it instinctively, turning her hand to place a kiss in her palm his thumb passing over Uri's mark as he stroked the top of her hand. "Please,
Amica
."
"Grim..." A soft sigh. "Why?"
I love you.
The words rested on his tongue, but he knew the walls had ears. "I can't let you go. You mean more to me than you know."
For a few tense moments, they stared at each other. Nina looked at Grim, trying to decide what to do, while Grim looked at Nina, hoping she would finally say yes. He wouldn't force her, but he also couldn't lose her.
"Come lay beside me, Grim."
He was beside her in a second, reaching out for her and pulling her against him. It felt right to have her against him, with him. Grim tipped her face up, looking into wide brown eyes dancing with a hint of curiosity. It was one of his favorite faces, one that most assuredly spelled out trouble for him. It was one of the many things he loved and hated about her.
He pulled her even closer. "I don't want to lose what we had in the beginning."
Her lashes lowered, shielding her eyes for a second. "We will always have that first conversation, Grim." Nina raised her eyelids and looked at him. "We won't lose that."
But already he felt the easiness between them slipping away and becoming something else. Grim wasn't sure what it was, or even if it was going to be good for them, but it was there in every word and touch.
Turning away from her, Grim forced a smile and retreated into the past. "Do you remember the second time we met?"
Nina swung her leg over, straddled his hips, and placed her ear against his heart. "Of course," her voice rumbled through him. "You appeared out of nowhere and claimed to be my boyfriend, then commanded the detective to leave. I was so freaked out."
"You didn't show it." Grim stroked a hand through her hair, twining the curls around his fingers. "You kept a level head, and didn't as much as let out a peep when I told you I was Death."
Nina laughed the sound carefree and young. He'd forgotten what it sounded like to hear her laugh, really, truly laugh. Grim hadn't realized how much he'd missed the sound. He didn't realize how integral Nina had become to his life after only a few weeks, just a little more than a month. It was amazing the difference time made.
"Yeah, well, what was I supposed to do? Faint? Scream? Go into 18th Century female hysterics?" She snorted. "Give me a little credit, Grim."
His lips quirked at her indigent tone. Sometimes she forgot how small and fragile she was, but he never did. Not even for a second. She was a mouse around lions, and unless she suddenly changed her species, that was all she would ever be.
Still, he loved her. A lion loved a mouse.
Grim looked down at her bent head; her ear rested on his heart, her other hand rested across from her, the same hand that bore his brother's mark. Jealousy flooded Grim's veins and soaked into his bones. Uri had constantly pushed him, gotten under his skin and made him wonder how much he needed a brother.
"Give me your left hand."
Nina lifted her hand and looked quizzically up at him. Whatever she saw in his eyes made her lever herself into a sitting position, and with a tiny bit of hesitation, finally give him her hand. Uncertainty furrowed her brows, but steely resolve hardened her body.
She wasn't afraid of him, and Grim wondered if she'd ever been. Nina had always been strong, and perhaps whatever power he had over her had just been an illusion. She held all the power, and always had.
Laying a gentle kiss on the inside of her wrist, then her palm, Grim turned her hand over and stared at the intricate mark there. The seal was only as big as his thumb, and could be completely overlooked as a birthmark to humans, but the swirling patterns and complicated spells were more than visible to him. In the heart of the contract, written in a language only ancients could read, was Uriel's seal.
He would wipe the mark from her body, take away everything that was his brother. Nina had given her consent thus far, or the seal would have repelled him. It was a small dose of Uri's power inside her body, but Nina didn't know that.
Rubbing his thumb across the mark, Grim looked up into her eyes. So beautiful, so captivating. Everything about her was captivating. The tight, dark brown and red curls, her soft raw-sugar skin, the curves that kept him locked to her, drowning in her—addicted, that's what he was.
Grim kept his voice low, so the walls didn't hear. "Do you trust me?"
Something clouded in her eyes, maybe uncertainty and fear. But it was gone and Nina was leaning down and kissing him like he was a life raft in a tsunami. "I trust you, Grim."
He knew how much it cost her to admit that, and he couldn't be any more thankful. Rubbing his thumb against the mark again, Grim gathered a bit of his energy and forced it into Nina, past Uri's mark, until the seal broke, faded away, and created a new contract.
Nina's body tensed and she bit out a small cry. He knew the pain she was feeling was intense, but it was also fleeting. It was much easier to remove or apply a contract then to override one. However, at the time contracts had been used reapers died more often, leaving the woman contracted to a dead reaper. That was why the contracts had been remade, the ability to override another's claim insinuated into the fine print.
