Her threats were nothing new to me; she was not the first and she would not be the last to become so violently possessive of me. I usually didn’t tolerate even the most playful suggestion of ownership, and I knew I needed to make my stance on the matter clear. But I found myself feeling curious about her intentions instead…
“We are not lovers, nor can we everbecomelovers, and yet you think you can deprive me of—”
I was not prepared for it when Nuala stepped into me and looped her arms around my neck to drag me down. She pressed up against me again just before our mouths met in a frenzy that pulled me in like a cyclone.
I’d made an art form of seduction over the centuries, but kissing Nuala for the first time was unlike anything that I’d ever experienced before. There was no need for a slow buildup to establish a mutual rhythm; it felt like we had kissed a thousand times. Our lips and tongues were in perfect and delicious sync as if we already anticipated one another’s every move. She gripped my hair tightly at the base of my skull in the exact way that always seemed to drive me absolutely wild. And the soft andeager sounds escaping her only made me more desperate to know how she would sound while I was thrusting into her.
I did not want to stop, but she pried our mouths apart just enough to suck in an urgent breath.
“We can never be lovers?” she panted my comment back to me and then shook her head. “I disagree.”
I yanked her back against me to kiss her even harder as a sudden and undeniable urge to possess her bubbled up from some primal fey part of me. It overcame me with a demand that would never be sated by anything less than absolutelyeverythingI could take from her. I needed…
To consume her…
A spike of horror snapped me back to reality so fast it was like whiplash. I jerked my head away to look around and confirmed the fear that I had been utterly unravelled, and now my shadows were free. The dark tendrils of my magic were caressing Nuala while the water steamed and writhed around her. The stone edge of the pool behind her was corroded, and the air was hot and thin.
And yet that same power was completely harmless on the witch’s fragile skin. The shadows almost seemed as if they needed to touch her as much as I did. They revelled in her, twisting in her hair and clinging to her nipples. They curled around her throat and brushed across her lips so she breathed them in. I had never seen them be able to interact with anyone before, but they seemed completely enraptured and content in her presence.
Nuala cupped my face, her thumb brushing across my cheekbone, and her gentle touch grounded me enough to get the shadows under control again. I ached for more of her but was too afraid of losing my composure again.
“Why did you do that?” I growled, my eyes on her lips that were swollen and begging formore. “You have…”
Ruined me. She had ruined me.
“That was exceptionally cruel of you to use your Sight to kiss me like that,” I chastised her furiously.
“I needed you to understand,” she explained simply, her voice now clipped again.
“Understandwhat?” I demanded impatiently.
“What you would lose,” she replied cryptically before pushing away. She turned and strode out of the hot pool without another backward glance. Leaving me with my writhing shadows, a hard cock, and more questions.
Rian, are you alright?Darragh blared suddenly down our bond in my mind, and I realized she’d obliterated all my mental shields.It feels like you are under attack!
I do not think he is feeling the kind of adrenaline you think he is,Ciaran chimed in tauntingly.
She kissed me,I revealed thoughtlessly, too overcome and disorientated to be discreet about what happened.
Although it felt like more than just a kiss. I could still feel the effects of it in my body while I quickly finished washing and then got dressed in clean clothes.
Like that kiss had altered me somehow.
Chapter twenty
WE MET AS ENEMIES
Ornella
Ilaid on the floor in Sage’s tent after my bath and another meal that was practically forced into me by Ciaran. I was still unsure why he bothered, but I was thankful to him for taking me to the bathhouse in the city instead of the river. He’d even set a guard at the entrance to one pool so I had it all to myself to wash away my cousins’ blood. And he had refrained from commenting when I emerged a whole hour later to find he’d sent the guard home. He had been guarding the door himself after he finished his bath.
He probably assumed I was emotional after torturing and killing Arren and Finn. But my vile cousins were the last thing on my mind while I sat hugging my knees to my chest in the shallow water and tried to quiet my sobs.
I just hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my mate for even a moment longer.
I had managed to compartmentalize all day so I could be functional, but the moment I sank into the hot water, Sage was all I could think about. I tormented myself with the memory of his gorgeous face speckled with water droplets in the hot spring. Of his mouth on me as he made all the markings on my neck and chest that were already fading despite my attempts to slow their healing.
Of him being dragged away from me by a monster and taken somewhere I could not follow.
