She’s flushed, her head tilted to the side, her eyes closed. She squirms in her seat, shifting closer until she’s sitting on my lap.
She’s so close that any moment now she could feel just how much the taste of her blood affected me.
“Yes…” she answers in a breathless voice. “I—” She wets her lips as she slowly pries her eyes open.
Her eyes sparkle with warmth and something more. Something?—
She reaches for me, her hand curving alongside my jaw.
“Nyk...”
My heart thuds in my chest. Despite the danger, or maybebecauseof it, adrenaline surges through my veins.
Is this…fuck or flight response? Because I’m still primed for danger, but my cock is hard and straining against my pants, ready to fight its way through anything just to get into her warm depths.
“Moe,” I rasp her name, reaching for the nape of her neck and bringing her flush against me.
Our eyes meet. One second; that’s all it takes to see the conviction in her gaze. The next, our lips are pressed together in a hurried dance as we try to capitalize on the moment. Taste, feel, savor: we try to do all three at once. But time is limited. Our lives are limited. Right now is all we have.
She ends up in my lap, one leg on each side of me as she wraps her arms around my neck. I keep one arm around her waist and the other at her nape, caging her in.
She squirms and rubs herself on top of me as if she can’t get enough.
Fuck! I can’t get enough either.
I lick the seam of her lips, prying her mouth open so I can taste all of her. She doesn’t even fight. Her hands end up in my hair, pulling on my scalp as she deepens the kiss, using her tongue to duel with my own.
We rock back and forth as the kiss becomes rougher, more primal. Her grip is almost painful as she bites and scratches my lips with her teeth. It’s almost as if she’s trying to devour me.
That enthusiasm in turn fuels my own and makes me forget all about my wish to be gentle with her. Want responds to want; desire to desire. The more she pushes the boundaries, the easier it is for me to let myself go.
We’re both so wrapped in each other and this moment that the outside world dims.
But the Culling continues. And the Tempest domain male is not the only one searching for me.
“Fuck,” I mutter against her lips as I slightly pull her back.
She blinks furiously, her cheeks red, her eyes filled with confusion.
“Someone’s here.”
45
“Someone’s here.” The warning has barely left my mouth when the barricade detonates inward.
The slab Moe wedged against the doorway erupts into splinters of stone and twisted metal, blasted across the room with enormous force.
I seize her by the waist and drag her under me as fragments scythe through the air overhead, smashing into the opposite wall in a deafening spray.
Dust bursts outward in choking clouds, filling the room with grit and pulverized stone.
A figure steps through the settling haze—an unfamiliar male.
He is tall enough that the doorway seems small around him, broad-shouldered and thick through the chest. His body is sheathed in dark segmented armor assembled from mismatched plates of metal so scarred and repolished they gleam dully beneath the crimson light. Weapons cover him in layers—daggers sheathed at his hips, throwing knives strapped to each thigh, two short swords crossing over his back.
But the moment my gaze lands on him, I know with absolute certainty those weapons are not merely carried for show. Because they begin to move.
A low metallic rattle fills the room. Every scrap of metal around us trembles.
