I tilt my head, feigning thought. “Seems dramatic.”
“Guilty.”
His hand falls away from my skin, the loss of contact sharper than it should be–but he doesn’tretreat. The heat of him is everywhere still, curling around my spine and thrumming beneath my skin.
“It’s strange,” he murmurs, sounding less playful than before as his gaze rakes over my face time and again. “I’ve known plenty of desire. Chased it. Fed on it.”
His eyes drop to my mouth for the briefest moment before lifting again. He’s completely unashamed in his perusal and seems lit with something that feels like hunger and warning in one.
Somehow I feel like his prey, but I have no desire to flee.
“But you…” He shakes his head once, almost smiling, like he can’t quite believe his own admission. “You’re not simply a craving…you’re a disruption.”
I blink, breath catching, and for a moment, I swear my body leans toward him without meaning to.
“You throw off the careful rhythm of my life,” he says, voice lower now, the words curling between us like a confession. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
When I speak, my voice is quieter than intended. “You’re saying I’m…inconvenient?”
Riven smiles again, slow and sharp.
“Unquestionably. The most inconvenient thing I’ve encountered in a hundred years.”
I lift a brow, ignoring the heat pooling low in my stomach and the way my hands suddenly itch to feel his smooth skin in return.
“You have a strange way of complimenting people, Riven.”
“I’ve never had to try before, darling.”
There’s no arrogance in it, just truth. Somehow that makes it worse, because I believe him.
I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for what happens if he ever puts his all into trying.
He leans in closer again, narrowing the space between us until I can feel his breath fanning against my lips. His hands rise to rest on the bed on either side of me, trapping me securely in his presence.
“I should go,” he murmurs, the words quiet but heavy, dipped in something hushed and sinful. “I’m already breaking far too many rules by standing in the heart of the wraith’s territory.”
The edge of a smile tugs at my lips before I can stop it.
“Then why haven’t you?”
He doesn’t answer.
He only holds that fragile, sparking space between us.
I don’t breathe and neither of us looks away.
And though he gives no sign of what this is doing to him, there’s a stillness in his posture that feels like control, barely leashed.
Suddenly he stiffens.
His gaze cuts toward the door, or maybe the shadows just beyond it, every part of him pulled taut.
“I truly have to go, darling,” he says, and the velvet in his voice is gone, replaced by something clipped and reluctant.
And just like that, he vanishes.
No farewell or parting glance…just the room reclaiming its quiet space like he’d never been here at all.
