He turned back towards the door, grasping desperately at his resolve, and replied, “Yes.”
“Does that have anything to do with whatever you and my father were arguing about?”
He stopped. He didn’t answer. She crossed the darkened entryway towards him, running her fingers along the marble side of the stairs.
“There are no secrets in this estate,” she elaborated.
Reeve turned towards her, pushing down and down and down on the way her Magic called to him.
She leaned against the large pillar at the foot of the stairs and looked up at him. “Could it be me you were arguing over?” she asked with a wicked grin.
Reeve groaned at her position. How inviting and carefree it was. His heightened senses caught the slight smell of sweet green apples, which lingered on her lips. “Don’t do this to me, please.”
“A high lord of Aterna, using such begging words.”
“The High Lord,” he corrected her.
“High Lords have Ladys,” she said boldly at last.
Reeve laughed. “Not human ones.”
She pouted at once. He smiled in satisfaction. Their dance of dominance was addictive.
“I’m not a human,” she said.
“Well, you aren’t Immortal.”
Her arrogance faltered, and the courage she’d come before him with withered.
“You’ll be back for Antony?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I won’t be back here for quite some time, I imagine.”
The playful way she’d approached him was long gone. They stood at the foot of the stairs as distant music filled the painful silence between them.
“Why?” she asked softly.
Reeve looked at her and spoke without hesitation. “Because I cannot help Antony. And this is not my war. Not my home.”
Her brows raised, expecting him to say something more, something real. Something with courage. About her.
“That’s it? That’s my goodbye?”
Reeve didn’t answer.
She scoffed. “I guess I’m beginning to understand why you’re three hundred years old and not married.”
She was a wicked creature.
He closed the gap between them faster than she could register his move. His fingers slid across her throat as he pushed her against the glittering marble wall of the stairs. She had only a moment to gasp before the sound was stifled by his lips. Her body tensed beneath him at once, and she moaned softly against him.
Ownership surged through him as his tongue tasted her sweet mouth at last. The desire to claim, to provide for, to honor, to multiply—
She relaxed beneath him, and with a long inhale, her hands slid across his chest, winding their way to the back of his neck. His fingers twisted up through her hair, gripping just enough to force her mouth open farther. His free arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up. Her feet dangled as he stood to his full height, never releasing her lips as he lifted her.
He licked across her tongue, frantic and forceful. Her lips allowed him whatever he wanted. She responded to him with supple submission and soft, throaty whines he was certain would be burned into his memory for a thousand years.
Her fingers spread, grazing his exposed skin on the back of his neck and coiling up through his hair as she kissed him back. Red sirens of warning blazed through him as the deadly creature in his arms said his name against his lips.
