Clasping his now-icy cheeks in my palms, I did what he’d asked of me when he held me in the sweetly scented tunnels of the Luxe.
I kissed him.
His lips—cooler than before—were still that strangely enticing juxtaposition of soft and firm as his entire body jerked. He didn’t pull away, but he went completely rigid against me. He was as still as he’d been in the vine tunnel, and I did once more what I’d done then.
Catching his plump lower lip between my teeth, I bit him.
Not hard enough to draw his blood or hurt him, but, like before, he was no longer still.
I kissed him, but hedevoured. His head tilted, and he parted my lips with a fierce stroke of his tongue. The sharp scrape of his fangs against my lips sent a tight shudder through me as his hand fisted the hair at the nape of my neck. He held me there, his kiss hard, demanding, and I loved his nearly immediate, raw response as I flicked my tongue over his. A rumble came from deep within his throat, his chest. He tasted as decadent as his blood, smoky and sweet, and I quickly lost myself in the kiss. In him.
My fingers slid back, sinking into the soft strands of his hair as I pressed against his chest, wanting to be closer. Needing it. Because he kissed me just like he had the first time. As if he wouldn’t let a single inch of my mouth go unexplored. As if he’d been waiting his entire life to do this. The thought no longer felt silly or whimsical. It felt like sinking under the surface of my lake. It felt like a wild sort of peace. It feltright.
And that scared me.
I broke the kiss but couldn’t retreat far. His hand was still on the back of my head, buried in my hair, and I was close enough to feel his cool breath coming fast and shallow against my tingling lips.
Only then did I realize that the temperature of the roomhad risen.
“I hope that worked,” I whispered, swallowing.
His chest rose with a deep breath against mine as his hand eased from my hair. “I’m level.”
“Good.” I started to put some distance between us, but his arm around my waist remained as tight as before. “I’m still in your lap.”
“I know.”
“It’s not exactly comfortable,” I lied. I’d never felt more comfortable, which made me unsteady. Vulnerable.
“Neither are you.”
My brows shot up. “That was—”
“My dick was hard the whole time you were sitting in my lap,” he said. “The kissing didn’t help.”
“—rude,” I finished, blinking.
The shadows under his skin had slowed and were fading. “And here I thought getting my dick hard was what you were aiming for before Attes arrived.”
My mouth dropped open. “Not anymore.”
Some of the intense brightness eased from his stare. “Liar,” he whispered in the scant inches between our mouths.
I was such a liar.
His eyes met mine. “I had to behave that way.”
I knew immediately that he was speaking about how he’d acted in front of Attes. There were far more important things to discuss, but I said, “Really?”
“Attes is driven by three needs—peace, war, and fucking.”
“In that particular order?”
A trace of a smile appeared. “In any order. If he so much as had anideathere was little attraction between us, he would’ve been more interested in you than he already was.”
“More interested? I don’t see why you’d think he was interested at all.”
“You threatened to make him eat his eyes.”