A sting pricked my neck. My heart hammered, and suddenly, my leg was guided over his shoulder, precise enough to steal my breath. His hand braced beneath my knee as he removed the last caterpillar.
“You’ve no bites.”
He lowered my leg gently and rose. Now it was me looking up at him. His silhouette cut the light, his shoulders swallowing the air. He tilted my chin with one finger. My nape bent. Strands of hair parted from my neck, and he pulled free the last caterpillar.
He smelled good. Far too good. Sharp eucalyptus, soft moss, raw bark.
“I spoke too soon,” he murmured. “May I?”
I nodded.
Slowly, he lowered himself. His lips brushed my collarbone. Then kissed me. A searing line traced down my skin as his tongue followed the curve of my neck. My breath dissolved. My head tilted back, and my knees turned weak like candies ready to spill. He growled low, rough, and right against my ear.
Then I felt his fangs.
He bit me.
A shadow bite on my sugared skin. Right there, in the tender hollow between shoulder and neck. That was the moment the tray gave up. A rain of black donuts tumbled over us. His gloved palm pressed into my neck, holding me as if he’d keep me prisoner in his grasp. A sigh slipped from me as he kissed me once more, then broke away.
“You drew out the venom, didn’t you?” I stammered, breathless.
“Their bites aren’t deadly.” He straightened, licking the corner of his lips. “But they’re used in aphrodisiac potions. I didn’t want you… affected.”
He left the words hanging. His eyes glowed like embers under ice. Burning yellow, like when he transformed in his cursed form.
“And you?” I breathed. “You will be.”
That smile. The one edged in ruin. “I’m immune to such pettiness.”
He said it in that frozen voice. But I saw it. In the dilation of his amber eyes. In his breath, barely reined. In the tension of his jaw. He wasn’t as untouchable as he thought.
“Ahem,” a dry voice said.
I shoved Arawn back with all my strength, caught red-handed in sugar. He crashed against the table with a dull thud.
Aignan stood there, front hoof tapping the ground with the annoyance of an innkeeper catching scandal. His tail whipped the air, and his gaze screamed paternal disappointment.
“I leave for two hours,” he muttered, “and it’s debauchery.”
Chouquette snickered, floating beside him, ribbons tangled in each of her tails.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I squeaked far too high, cheeks aflame.
Aignan raised a brow. “So it’s worse.”
“Fine!” I clapped my hands. “I have to move the meal elsewhere and make ice cream!”
Ice cream in winter.What a ridiculous idea! I was about to slip away when Arawn’s voice cut me.
“Lempicka.” He rose into my line of sight. “I was leaving for the sorcerers’ market. I wondered…” His brows drew tight, leaning down to my height. “That curtain you cut up, is it mine?”
I gulped. I’d borrowed his beige kitchen curtain to make another dress. And, incidentally, a few green-and-pink floral towels for ribbons and a corset. “Yes, I?—”
“I’ll bring more.”
That almost smile, cold as a sharpened blade, brushing close without cutting. Yet no longer a threat. Or maybe I’d simply grown used to it. The sorcerer tilted his head, eyes narrowing, like a misty winter-morning now fixed on Aignan.
“It also seems someone redecorated my chambers. Moved the furniture. Left a massive frozen puddle. And every left shoe from my pairs is missing.”
