“Yourcanines,” he barks. “I need them gone.”
I frown.
How the hell am I supposed to do that?
I lift my hand, fingering the strange, sharp fangs still throbbing with the need tobite.Even pushing on them threads me full of moan-inducing pleasure.
He snarls again, shaking his head in jerky motions, refusing to look at me. Like he’s battling a shadow of his own.
I give them another hard push, but it only splits me apart with a sharper spear of pleasure that almost bursts me in the most carnal way.
“I can’t,” I admit, the words mangled with my clotting emotion. Myconfusion.“I don’t know how. This is the first time they’ve—”
“You can’t bite me, Orlaith. Youcan’t.”
Is he worried I’m going to hurt him? That wasn’t my intention. I wanted totastehim; wanted to feel his warmth gush across my tongue and slip down my throat.
Still do.
“I just— It feltright,” I say, swallowing thickly, pressing against the foreignthingsagain to relieve some of the tension—shooting another zing of rapture straight to my core.
Stirring me up.
I whimper, wishing he’d look at me. Step close to me.
Touch me.
“I know,” he says, scrubbing his face with his hands.“It’s not your fault, Milaje. But we can’t do this. We have to stop.”
I realize he’s slipping away one prowled step at a time, and my heart dives.
I scramble up, moving forward.
His sharp snarl snaps through the space like the swing of a blade, and he moves so close to the wall he’s almost shouldering it—still pacing back and forth.
Back and forth.
Gaze nailed to the ground.
A thought crosses my mind, filling me with a seed of hope.
I pause …
“What if I’m not facing you?” I suggest, lowering to my knees.
His stare whips sideways, paralyzing me with that dusky perusal. Again, I catch sight of that deeper entity staring back at me and shiver all the way to my bones.
I dig my hands through the foliage until they meet the stone beneath, pushing forward.
Baringmyself.
He growls, and I watch from beneath my arm as he scents the air. Prowls around me, like some great beast circling his prey.
“Orlaith.”
“Rhordyn.”
“If I see you in this position before any other person, I’ll kill them,” he says, the words too soft to be so brutally honed—a chilling threat that lashes at my hot, throbbing core. “I’ll eat their fucking entrails. Do you understand?”
