“No,” she surrendered another answer of compliance.
His fingers continued, his attention tracking every chill, every minute flutter of her pulse, as his fingers grazed across her skin. They tucked beneath her jaw, craning her neck back and deepening her head into his palm. Her eyes opened, but she was still a coward. She cast her gaze to the side.
With his pinky and ring finger still hooked beneath her jaw, his thumb trailed over her lips. “What about here?”
Maeve’s eyes closed once more as his thumb pulled her bottom lip down.
When she didn’t answer, he spoke. “Because I am determined to bring him to his knees with my performance. And I wouldn’t want you to be surprised by my commitment to my role.”
Maeve scoffed and opened her eyes at the ceiling.
“Is this your way of telling me not to get attached to your attention? A little reminder, it isn’t real and you are just pretending?”
His grip tightened. “Would you prefer I not pretend?”
She nearly laughed and met his gaze at last. Her tongue was prepared to mock him until his parted lips and heavy-lidded eyes settled over her, halting her words. There was nothing else in the world designed so perfectly as his face. Not even the gown. His violet fire-filled eyes harbored an edge of sin, of wickedness that caused a burning deep in her belly.
Because he was a paradox.
He was a rogue, a six-foot something God of power, with a face designed to corrupt. But the Aterna Magic pumping through him offered her something entirely different. Something pure. Something of promises that could be kept. Something that ensured pain was a foreign idea. Something that. . .
Reeve hummed, the sound pulling her closer to him, to that something she refused to name, to give further weight to.
His fingers moved from her lips and jaw, gliding up her cheek as he softly carded them through her hair. His voice mirrored that sinful look in his eyes. “If you look at me like that, he’ll come unglued at once.”
His fingers repeated the motion with a tenderness that contradicted the way his tongue briefly slipped forward and coated his bottom lip. The way his breathing sang to her in warning.
His top lip pulled wide, revealing his pointed canines.
She hated those perfect teeth. She hated how they painted him as the apex predator he was. She hated that they were pearly white. She hated that she wondered what they’d feel like pressed into her skin, just where her neck bled into her shoulder, if they could bite through skin and tear her apart the way she deserved—
Reeve’s satisfaction only blossomed. “My, my,” he purred. “You’re giving me so many ideas for this evening.”
This evening.
A game.
As she always was to him: a game.
Maeve huffed, blinking and breaking the trance he held over her. She brought her arm between them, forcing him away. Hedidn’t fight her and let his hold on her fall. She moved away from him, breathing fully at last.
“You really do enjoy getting under my skin,” she muttered.
“It’s so difficult now, with someone else crawling through it.”
Her shoulders lowered. She turned back towards him, refusing to be ashamed of the darkened veins running across her body. He offered her a weak smile and a look that expressed a half-apology.
“How about this?” she said, chewing the inside of her lip. “The first one to make that disgusting green possession in his eyes fade wins.”
Reeve’s smile returned. “And what will I get when I win, kitten?”
Maeve shook her head, ignoring the term she’d told him many times not to call her. “Ifyou win,” she corrected. “If you win, you can choose your prize. And if I win, I can choose mine.”
Reeve’s eyes sparkled. “No exceptions?”
Maeve shook her head, already plotting her own prize he’d be forced to give her. “None.”
Reeve tipped his head back and laughed. It was disarming, filled with pure joy. “Oh, perfect!” When his eyes landed on her, that divine face, that paradox, that challenge in his eyes, made her brain fire off a multitude of signals.
