He reached the curve where her thigh met her hip and paused, his thumb pressing lightly into the softness there as though memorizing the shape of her.
“You are warm,” he murmured, and it was the first time she noticed that Erevos’s gaze was unfocused.
Lyssena’s breathing had grown heavy now, uneven and almost desperate, each inhale catching halfway in her chest before spilling out in a shaky exhale. Her fingers tightened against the table, her back arching just slightly as though drawn upward by invisible strings.
“Yes,” she breathed, her voice thin. “I— I think I am.”
Erevos tilted his head, studying her.
Her second thigh lifted gently under his guiding hand, her leg parting wider for him, and the air against her most intimate place made her shudder visibly.
She could feel how exposed she was, how vulnerable.
How utterly ready.
Her heart pounded so loudly she wondered if he could hear it. Perhaps he could.
Because his gaze darkened, and he leaned closer.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The First Wound
Erevos
Erevos had believed he understood hunger.
He had existed on it. For centuries, he had harvested emotions without preference, consuming them as easily as breathing. But this . . . This was ruinous.
Lyssena’s scent rolled off her in waves so thick he could taste it in the air, could feel it dissolving into his shadows, could feel it sinking into him like molten gold poured into hollow spaces. Her nervousness, her anticipation, the fragile tremor of trust beneath it all—it was overwhelming.
He was drinking without meaning to, and it made focusing nearly impossible.
She sat exposed before him, breath uneven, thighs parted by his hands, and for the first time in his long existence, Erevos understood distraction.
“Lyssena,” he said, his hand remaining on her leg. He wanted to touch every organ of her body. His songbird was just too soft.
Erevos’s shadows trembled around them, and his cock grew heavy.
It strained forward, brushing against the edge of the table as he leaned closer; the pressure felt too good. The sensation was foreign and distracting and almost maddening.
He shifted his weight. Just slightly.
His thighs moved in a restrained, slow, back and forth against the wood, seeking relief without abandoning his focus, friction sending flickers of sensation through him that only sharpened the hunger pooling at the center of his being.
Lyssena inhaled sharply at the movement, and he saw the way her gaze flickered downward. Saw the flush deepen along her neck.
Erevos drew his tongue slowly over his teeth, tasting the air between them, tasting her.
Her scent had changed. It was richer now, and so much warmer.
It was inviting.
“You are . . . intoxicating,” he said, his voice lower than before, threaded with something rougher, something no longer composed.
Her emotions tangled and untangled at that, and he swallowed them instinctively. He had imagined touching her countless times in the privacy of his own thoughts. Imagined the softness of her, the way her body would respond, the sounds she might make.
But imagination had not prepared him for reality. For the tremble of her thighs beneath his hand. For the way her breath stuttered when his thumb moved a fraction lower.
