The breath I took went nowhere as liquid heat flooded my veins. The way he said“fucking” conjured images of silk sheets and tangled limbs. “What would’ve been more inappropriate was if you hadn’t taken care of it, and I had to do it myself.”
His nostrils flared.
“Why did you come to my bedchamber last night?”
“Arm’s reach,” he murmured. “Remember?”
“I remember, but was it truly that? Or did you sense my need? My want? Of you.” I inched forward, half-expecting him to retreat. He didn’t. When I spoke, my lips brushed the corner of his, and I felt a faint zap of static. “I was thinking of you when I fucked my fingers. Imagining that it was your touch—before I even knew you were in the chamber.”
“Sera,” he warned—or begged. It sounded like both.
“Just thought you should know.” I drew back, stilling when his molten silver eyes locked onto mine. “I can take care of my desires, but that only goes so far.”
“You’d better make it stretch as far as it can go,” he ordered softly.
“And if I don’t?”
“What I did to those gods in the throne room will pale incomparison to what I do to whoever satisfies your needs.”
A jolt of surprise shot through me, quickly followed by a really twisted dose of pleasure at his jealousy-fueled threat. Anger was right behind it, though. I had no intention of satisfying my needs with anyone. But what he demanded went beyond arrogant when he claimed to want no such thing from me. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear toyou, Nyktos. If you want me as your Consort in title only, then you have no say overwhatI do or withwhom, from this point until I take my last breath—whenever that may be.”
“If? You speak as if there is another option.”
My pulse skipped. “Because there is.”
“And what is that?” His head moved, and his lips brushed the corner of mine.
“We satisfy each other’s needs.” I was a little surprised as I spoke the words, but they were theright nowI’d been thinking about earlier. “You don’t needfragiletrust, nor do you really even have to like someone when you have attraction.”
His fingers curled into my hair. “I don’t dislike you, Sera.”
An unwanted emotion swelled in my chest, leaving me off-kilter and making me nervous. I tried to put distance between us, but his hold prohibited it. “There is no reason to lie. I know where we stand with each other. I’m not offering myself for whatever meager affections you or anyone can give.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Then whatareyou offering yourself for?”
“Pleasure.”
The wisps of eather went wild in his eyes. “That is all?”
“Why does it have to be anything else when it’s whatIwant?” I said, and that was the truth. Maybe there wasmorebehind it, but I knew better than to pry too deeply into that. “Either way, I will not play the I-don’t-want-you-but-no-one-else-can-have-you game. With you or anyone.”
“There is no one else, Sera.” His hand landed on the center of my back, causing me to jump.
“Only if there is you,” I said, fully aware that I had no plans of easing my needs with anyone else at the momentorin the foreseeable future. Not because of anything he’d said, but because it simply didn’t appeal to me.
But he didn’t need to know that.
“So, that’s the deal. Between us. Not between your father and some ancestor of mine.”
His eyes flashed, the eather seeping into the veins just beneath them as his mouth came within inches of mine once more. “Pleasure for the sake of pleasure?”
“Yes,” I whispered as I felt a strange warming in my chest.
“You’re so reckless.” His hand slid from my back to my hip, leaving shivers in its wake. “You have your dagger on you?”
My brows pinched at the unexpected question. “Yes?”
“Make sure it stays hidden,” Nyktos warned. “Because a Primal has arrived.”