He made it sound easy, as if she could just forget everything with the snap of her fingers. Maybe she couldn’t forget, but with that brush running slowly over the inside of her arm, it was certainly much more difficult to focus on anything else. The world shrank to a small bubble around them.
“Do you like how that feels?”
Rixxis licked her dry lips. “Yes.”
He lifted the brush from her arm. Though she couldn’t see him, she felt the shift in the air around them, as if she could sense him moving behind her. The brush slowly swept against the back of her neck, and she suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She gasped as firm fingers curled around her throat, his thumb resting against the thudding pulse in her neck. The warmth of his body pressed in against her from behind. “How does this make you feel?”
Her heart quickened. He wasn’t holding her so tight that it was uncomfortable or painful, and she could escape him easily. She was taller than him, stronger. There were a hundred ways she could get out of that hold if she wished.
Rixxis knew that logically and yet, somehow, when he put his hand around her throat, she had no desire to fight him. There was a part of her that was thoroughly convinced shecouldn’tfight him. She was a woman, weak as a kitten in his hands, and she was surprised shelikedfeeling that way. The same familiar warmth from before spread through her, pooling low in her stomach and between her legs.
“Small,” she answered at length. “Vulnerable.”
“Powerless?”
Rixxis nodded slowly.
“And you like it?”
She nodded again.
“This is what I do,” Rowan whispered in her ear. “When I am in control, there’s nothing for you to worry about but pleasing me, and nothing for me to worry about except pleasuring you in all the different ways we choose.”
He nuzzled the side of his face against hers, tracing a line between her breasts. “It has been twenty-two days since I sailed away from Brucia and left you and Ieduin behind. Not one day has passed that I did not think of you—both of you. I have laid awake every single night since then craving the sound of your voice, the touch of his fingers on my collar, the scent of you standing next to me… It is maddening, to ache for someone and not know if they might be lying awake half the world away, aching for you, too. Maybe I am mad. And maybe I am not alone in that madness. Maybe—just maybe—you want me the same way I have wanted you.”
“I…” She didn’t know how to respond. Her mouth was dry and her mind racing, yet there were no coherent thoughts. Only a small and unfamiliar voice screaming somewhere inside.Yes, yes, yes.
Even if what he was saying was true, she couldn’t let down her guard. If she let anyone get too close, if anyone knew the truth about who she was, the cleverly crafted lie that was Rixxis Amaranth would be nothing more than dust in the wind.
He gripped her chin before she could form a response and turned her face toward him. Suddenly, his lips were on hers.
Rixxis had only ever kissed two other men before, and one of them had been her father. Kissing her husband had been a cold and disappointing thing, and she had thought that was all there was. Kisses were just flesh pushed together, meaningless and empty.
Until the moment Rowan kissed her.
His lips were firm and warm, as silently demanding as the rest of him. With that kiss, he unleashed the lightning he had been hiding behind his eyes and poured the fury of a quiet storm into her.
This was how it was supposed to be. This was what it felt like to be wanted by a man, and to want him back.
This was what it was like to want what she knew she could not afford to have.
Rixxis pulled away and he let her go at the first sign of resistance. For a minute, she stood there, teetering and fighting the sudden storm of emotion raging inside her. Then she took a step back.
“That was too much, wasn’t it?” he said with a frown.
She shook her head and took another step toward the door. “I’m sorry. I can’t,” she said and fled the basement.
Rixxis ducked into a small alcove two floors up, panting and fighting to hold back tears. One slipped out anyway. She quickly wiped it away without acknowledging it. She wouldn’t cry, not over this. Rixxis hadn’t shed a tear since the day she left Qet.
Rixxis is strong, she told herself.She’d never be reduced to tears over something so stupid as a man. Pull yourself together, girl.She forced herself to take a few steadying breaths.
Why was she crying anyway? The things he’d made her feel… She’d never felt like that before, so weightless she could fly, so soft and small. Sofeminine. Why should that make her cry? Especially when she’d liked how it felt?
Because it was a lie, and it waswrong. The woman Rowan wanted didn’t exist. Rixxis Amaranth was a figment, a lie she made up to make it easier to escape her life in Qet. Wanting what she wanted with him was impossible. She couldn’t let him get close because someone like Rowan… He made her want to tell him the truth, and the truth was dangerous.
She drew in a few deep breaths and fought to collect herself. Wrestling all the desires Rowan had just awoken in her into a box to be hidden away was far more difficult than she imagined. Even when she finally slid out of that alcove and made her way upstairs, she still wasn’t sure she’d buried that part of herself deep enough.