Her fingertips etched a slow circle in the center of my chest, stirring enough warmth under my skin to fill a glowing hearth with envy. “I’m afraid.”
“Nothing’s coming through that door that won’t go through me.”
“No, Pheolix,” she said. A touch of impatience glistened under her words, though the majority of her voice remained small. Cautious. “I’m afraid of sleep.”
I frowned. “Why?”
Her jaw worked in thought. “I’m afraid,” she said slowly, “that if I fall asleep, I’ll wake up and never see you again.”
Well.
Shit.
Moon and stars and loveless Guardians of Perpetuum. As if it weren’t enough torture to lie here and resist the urge to wrap her completely within myself. How did she manage to say the kinds of things I’d always accepted that I’d never hear?
Her voice did things to my head. Made me imagine things,envisionthings I had no right to envision. Made me ache to hear more.
“Please.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. So quietly the words almost didn’t exist.
“Why not?” Hurt strung the corners of her eyes. “Why was it so easy to kiss me outside the King’s bedroom, but you suddenly can’t now?”
Because she’d beenoutside the King’s room.
Because I was jealous. And reckless. And angry.
Because I was a fool.
Because something primal had woken my blood while dancing with her, had prowled viciously in a cage at the thought of another man touching her, had grown claws and fangs at the idea that he’d lay a hand on her—and now tucked itself into the shadows, vibrating between cold fury and fear that if I kissed her now, I wouldn’t stop.
My throat cracked, and I cleared it softly. “Go to sleep.”
“Kiss me to sleep.”
Theia in the sky. Spoiled little siren. She knew how to twist sweet words so that they cut like knives into my soul.
“Please,” she added. “Just one.”
My thumb coasted across her mouth, scraping gently at her lip. I stared at it. Full and rosy and enticingly lush.
“I just want to know,” she said, pulling my attention back to her gaze. “Did you kiss me outside his room because you wanted to? Or did you do it to stake a claim? Did you kiss me for him? Or did you kiss me forme?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, the sudden weight of guilt thickening the air in my lungs. “Probably both.”
She closed her eyes. “I want to know what it feels like to be kissed because you want me. Without the influence of anyone else. I want to escape this night. To pretend that kiss was mine and no one else’s.”
My thumb began moving again, cascading over soft skin in the near dark, and I wondered how many times Thaan had sent Selena to Emilius’s rooms before. Wondered how many other human men she’d been sent to ensnare, carving out her own emotions and leaving her skin as hollow as a baited trap.
Thaan’s happy to use my body as a means of strategy.
I’d almost exploded in greedy rage when she’d said it before. Now the words wrapped around my neck, suffocating me with heartbreak hidden in every syllable.
“Just one,” I murmured. “And then you’ll sleep.”
Her eyes opened. “Just one.”
“No more than that.”
