“No ...” the word batters my ear, his hand slipping from my neck and trailing around my back, where it settles atop the ladder of bones curled around my lung and heart. “I knowtoo much.”
I freeze, all my fight dissipating as if one tiny movement could impale me with a deadly strike.
“These right here?” he rumbles, tapping my ribs with the tips of his fingers. “We’rebothtucked beneath them. Stuck in this fragile cage together.”
“Then break out,” I plead. “Set mefree, Rhordyn!”
His body seems to calcify around me, and for a moment I think the man might have finally turned to granite. Until his grip on my wrists becomes bone-bruising, his other hand spearing up to coil my hair around his arm and pull.
He tugs me taut like a loaded bow.
My mouth pops open, chin tipping to the ceiling, and Rhordyn’s forehead connects with mine.
The world around us stills, paling in significance to the mountain of man poured over me.
We’re nose to nose. Eye to eye. Lips so close, his chilled breath is spilling into me. “I’ll give you anything, Orlaith. Anything but that. Don’t ask again.”
The words are spoken hauntingly calm, as if his heart stopped beating a very long time ago.
Another stunted response.
Another dead end.
The back of my eyes sting, a lump swells in my throat, and all I want to do is cry. But I can’t afford to spend more tears on him.
Not now.
Noteveragain.
“Why not?” I’m proud of myself when I manage to keep my voice steady. “Just answer me this one question, and don’t you dare answer with a grunt. After everything, I deserve a truth and you damn wellfuckingknow it.”
Nothing. He says nothing. Just murders me with his silence again.
Which tells meeverything—bleeding me in an entirely different way than the drops of blood I gift him nightly.
I close my eyes, severing myself in a way I can’t physically achieve. But then his grip slips from my hair, driving up to support the back of my head. His fingers spread, lacing through my thick locks and making me gasp.
He loosens a frosty breath that steals the fire from my cheeks. “Simple, Milaje. I refuse to live in a world where you don’t exist.”
My eyes pop open. “Wha—”
His lips bruise mine in an assault that steals my ability to speak.
Breathe.
Exist.
He melds me to his rampant will, my fire swelling to meet his ice as I give myself to the clash of teeth and tongues and lips.
We’re two oceans colliding in a battle for space. There are no winners; only chaos and desolation. Only blurred edges and the complete loss of one’s self. But at this moment ... I couldn’t care less.
He may be kissing me like he hates me, but I was forged by his acrimony. This is the only language Iknow.
He cleaves me apart with the spear of his tongue, spilling a heady rumble deep down into me, drugging me with his raw, hungry sounds.
I’m lost in a downward spiral of desperate, carnal need for the taste of him and the scrape of his teeth against my bottom lip, commanding me to surrender in a way that feels so basely primal.
He drops my wrists, and my fingers dive into his curls as his hands skate past the hem of my shirt, bunching it up around my hips and baring my behind.
