They stayed like that for a few long, perfect moments. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the bathroom. He set her down on shaky legs and washed his hands behind her, allowing her to do the same as she tried not to look at the evidence of his pleasure on hers, before he swept her back up with ease.
She laughed softly, her arms reaching around his shoulders, and glimpsed the affection in his eyes. ‘I can walk, you know.’
‘Don’t tempt me to fulfil my promise when I can’t,’ he said darkly.
She flushed as she recalled what he’d said to her in Estwood.
‘I want you completely undone. Feeling safe, not worried about the next day. Not thinking about anything but my body and yours and the pleasure I can give you. Then I’ll make sure your legs are so weak you can’t walk straight.’
When Kyan set her back on the bed and got in, she pushed up long enough to remove her shirt completely. His gaze barely had a moment to rake over her, but she relished the still-glazed look and the sensually brazen moment as her hair spilled down over her shoulders.
Then she sank onto his body with a sigh, needing that heat, the skin-to-skin.
He wrapped his arm around her, fingers dipping into the band of her shorts and over her backside to keep her close as he kissed her head.
Once, she had run from fear with research and hunts and control. All of those were still necessary. Useful. But it was Kyan that beat back the fear, tonight. Even as she swallowed a strange sob at the back of her throat and hid her face against his chest.
Was this relief, this bone-deep emotion?
Because she wasn’t sure she could cope if it was love.
As she slept, more deeply than she had in months, her dreams were still gilded and shimmering with slashes of paint and whispers of adivine conspiracy. But amid them was the low croon of the part of her that warned of danger.
For tonight, she tried her best to sink into her mate’s embrace, and ignore it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Bells
THE GRIP OF THE GUN WAS WARM WHEN BELLS’FINGERStwitched around it. Breath lodged in her throat as the essence of the dream lingered on a cloud of glittering black and dissipated from her mind.
Outside the small window to her right, the night was dark. A dim light still flickered from the candle she’d lit beside the narrow bed in Kyan’s townhouse, casting gentle, comforting patterns from within its frosted glass holder.
But something was wrong.
She didn’t know how she knew it, only that musichad swarmed its way into her dream, stirring the phantom essence of the Hunt and calling her back with an urgency that had her heart battering her ribs like trapped wings.
Bells sat up warily, listening.
It was warm still, and yet a chill crystallised in her belly.
She’d fallen asleep to the sounds of Remi playing her harp and the low, smooth hums added to the harmony. Had even left her door open a crack to purposefully listen, the gentle plucking and flowing like an otherworldly lure.
For once, she hadn’t dreamed of visions or death, merely the sparkling darkness that felt like the Hunt, and something else that ribboned at the edges of her mind.
Now, the house was quiet.
Bells ignored the cool, hard wood against her bare feet and cameinto the dark hallway, gun in hand. She’d been sleeping with one ever since Estwood. Not loaded. She’d made sure to wear pyjamas with pockets to keep the bullets in, or beneath her pillow, so she could clip them in quickly. She did it now without even breaking from her inspection of the hall.
Still, she felt naked and unprepared without her siblings and their heightened senses beside her.
The light beneath Remi’s door flickered angrily, as if someone was pacing.
And a deep pulsingstrangeness, like intense dread, vibrated in ripples across the floor.
Bells couldn’t stop moving, because something about the raw power felt … familiar.
She knocked.
