“Wow. You’re hard,” I blurt out, before covering my mouth with my hands. I want to die. “Not like that…not…I just meant you’re in good shape.”
He’s laughing at my mortification. "Go on, Commander, keep stroking my ego. Going somewhere?"
Fuck. This doesn't look suspicious at all. "Um...yes. I'm on my way to sleep with one of your guards."
"Do you enjoy winding me up?" He asks, his hot gaze firmly on me.
"Immeasurably, my lord," I say, with a curtsy. His eyes are fixed on my lips. Heat rises up my body, warming my face. I cannot explain the chemistry between us, or how the air feels thicker than honey when we're in it. I shake my head, trying to break the spell.
“Tell me where you’re going.”
"I'm going hunting."
"And why would that be? You were supposed to be leaving today."
"Iamstill leaving. And why does anyone do what they do? Because they want to. Have you always been this slow or is it something that's come with old age?"
He grabs my arm, pulling me through a door in the hallway. The temperature of the air around me plummets, my only source of heat the constant stream of warmth that radiates from Rexxan’s chest. I tilt my head back to see that we are in a huge wine cellar, plastered with wide oak shelves and barrels of red wine from floor to ceiling. The green stained-glass windows are lined with vines and ivy and I sigh. Everywhere here is mesmerising. "Wow. Is this yours? I’ve had this down my hallway this whole time? I mean, I'd heard you were obsessed with wine, but this is truly—“
"Renna."
"Yes.”
"Stop talking."
I open my mouth to tell him he's an arsehole, but he seals it with a fiery kiss, his hand closing around my jaw. He takes a slow, steady inhale through his nose, a low grumble in his throat as if this has been on his mind all night too. My soft moan gets lost in his mouth—forget that, I thinkI’mlost in his mouth. I run my hands up his chest, but as the solid muscle beneath my fingertips tenses, his breath catches in his throat.
"What?"
"Nothing," he says, his jaw gritting once more, and for a split second I think he’s just going to leave me here. I unbutton the top button of his shirt, and like yesterday, he shakes his head.
"Why? You're insecure?"
He laughs as if that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever said, disbelief encompassing his features. "No, huntress. I'm not insecure. I just can't be bothered to answer your questions right now."
My frown makes him roll his eyes and for once he gives up the fight. He lets me undo his shirt, and I try to focus as my slightly shaky fingers thread each button through its hole. His skin feels scorching beneath the wine coloured linen. Not just warm, actuallyhot. I push the shirt off his sculpted shoulders and the air leaves my lungs. The same lighting-like scar that runs over his face also covers the entire right side of his chest and runs down to his ribs on that side.
“Fuck, what happened to you?"
"You cannot possibly imagine everything that I have survived, Renna.”
“Fuck,” I repeat, unintelligently. I’m just not sure what else to say. Miles of his skin is scarred. It’s strangely beautiful, but I can't begin to imagine how much he has suffered. The fact that it hasn't vanished tells me all I need to know. Evergreens do not scar unless the cause of the injury has inflicted such deep emotional pain that it never heals. "Was it...was it a volcano? Or—“
"I don't want to have this talk right now," he says between kisses on my neck. He kisses me like heneedsme, like he’s just as aware as I am that our time together is ending. He shifts his thick, hard thigh between my legs, prompting another groan from my lips.I feel his arrogant grin against my neck. "Desperate, darling?"
"Does alliteration usually work for you in the bedroom? It won't on me."
He lets out a husky laugh, his lips moving down my neck. "Not normally, no. Let me make you feel good, Renna, please," he asks, switching to the language of my people.
When I nod, two hands land on my waist and sit me on one of the endless wine shelves. My leggings join my top on the pile of barrels on the floor. As he rakes a blistering gaze over my exposed legs, his eyes genuinely glow a little brighter like embers stoked by a breath. He looks like the statues I’ve seen of the gods, hewn from stone.
Ilovemaking bad decisions.
This is definitely one, but I appear to be doing it anyway. His smell invades my senses, and I’m lost in a cloud of red wine and dark wood as I tip my head back against the cold stone wall of the cellar, completely at the mercy of his expert mouth between my thighs.
The next word he breathes against my skin is in the language of the Shadow Hunters. "Asanalyia.”Breathtaking.
I have no doubt that I am probably the fifteenth woman he has said that to this week, but at this moment, I can’t find the resolve in me to care. I have been called beautiful by men and women alike, but Rexxan does it without words, looking at me like I'm the one brick that could bring that stone facade down. With a shaky exhale, he casts his eyes up to the ceiling as if asking the gods for forgiveness for what he is about to do.
