Page 271 of Blade of the Nightking

"Isn't breaking this bond exactly what you wanted?" His breath ghosted across my face, every word dripping with venom. "Isn't that why we've crossed half the world? Why we've bled for these wells? So you can go back..." His voice faltered for the briefest instant before curling with mockery. "... to the man you love."

The rough bark bit into my spine, but I refused to flinch. Refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing it hurt.

A cruel smile hooked one corner of his mouth, thin and humorless. "What will poor Aedric do, I wonder, when he learns what lengths you've had to go to to free yourself from me?" His voice dropped, rough around the edges despite himself. "How you moaned at nothing more than the ghost of my touch. How you unraveled in my arms."

To my horror, heat unfurled low in my stomach at his words, their brutal intimacy sending a traitorous wave through me that made my pulse stumble.

"I didn't ask to see those things. I didn't ask to feel them." My hands curled into tight fists at my sides, resisting the terrible urge to press them against his chest, to feel him. I swallowed hard, dragging the words past the knot in my throat. "The last person I ever wanted touching me was you.”

He shook his head slowly, his smile turning ravenous, as though he'd scented blood. "On the contrary, Eidra. I think you want me touching you. You want my hands on your skin, my mouth on your body. You want me to make you beg for me." My breath came in shallow pants now. "You want me to take you—and ruin you."

A soft sound escaped me against my will, and his focus sharpened like a predator's. The smile vanished. His thumb dragged slowly across my bottom lip, his eyes following the movement, a glassy hunger settling over his features as his control began to splinter in a way that was both terrifying and riveting.

"Admit it, Eidra,” he murmured, his voice like silk. “Admit that you want me.”

"Never," I whispered, the word little more than a thread of breath.

He shifted closer, the heat of his body searing through our wet clothes. “Drink, once you have been judged thrice—Past and longing claim their price. The first Gate tested your past. This one tested your darkest desire. And you passed… beautifully.”

Liquid heat pooled between my legs all over again. At the same time, every part of me screamed at the danger of his proximity. He wasn't merely looking at me. He looked as though he wanted to devour me.

So why had he been so furious at the well? Why had he forced himself to drink the blood after what we’d shared? Could it be that he’d really been furious with himself? That the well had forced him to confront his own longing, something he’d tried so hard to push away all this time?

And suddenly, I knew what it was—his darkest desire. The second Gate had revealed it to me.

My heart hammered as my hands found his belt, my fingers curling into the leather at his waist. His eyes widened, then darkened as I drew him closer until his body pressed flush against mine, his powerful thighs bracketing my own. Our noses grazed. My lips barely brushed his as I whispered against them, "Truth.”

He went utterly still, his eyes narrowing by the barest fraction, as if every instinct urged him to refuse me the one thing he'd always promised to give. Finally, he said, "What truth?"

Feverish awareness spread through me, centered on every place our bodies touched.

“That night in Illyra,” I summoned every scrap of courage I possessed, though my body trembled from head to toe. “You watched my hand between my thighs and wished it had been yours.”

His eyes flared, twin flashes of silver splitting the darkness like lightning.

"That wasn't a question."

I tipped my chin up. "It doesn't need to be."

His eyes held mine, hesitation flickering there for the merest instant, and I let him look. Let him see every crack he'd carved into my resolve.

Slowly, deliberately, I rolled my hips against his. A taunt. A challenge.

Something inside him gave way.

His hands closed around either side of my face, and his mouth crashed into mine. The force of the kiss robbed me of breath, fierce enough to feel like surrender rather than conquest, desperate enough to shatter every wall we'd built between us. It was the kiss of a man who’d fought himself for far too long—and finally lost.

Every nerve in my body blazed to life. My fingers tightened around his belt as my lips softened beneath his, answering him before my mind could remember why they shouldn't. My magic erupted from my core, and he deepened the kiss, his response immediate as he felt it rise.

His magic answered.

It surged toward mine with breathtaking force, vast enough to swallow me whole, an entire universe contained within its power.

Panic seized me as it reached for me—for that forbidden place Aedric had touched, and Thalassis had breached. I tensed, expecting another violation, another merciless intrusion into the deepest part of myself. Then, at the very last instant, it banked away with impossible precision, skimming the edges of me without ever crossing the boundary, mastered by the brutal discipline of his own will.

He could have. He simply... chose not to.

It was so impossibly, unexpectedly gentle that something inside me gave way. My fingers fumbled at his belt, trembling so violently I could scarcely make them obey.