I stare into the flames and drink my mead.
There’s something so easy in our silence. I realise that I haven’t been worried about what he’s thinking, that he expects me to dosomething even though he won’t tell me what that something is. Just being with Rafe is easy. I didn’t know it could be like that.
I’m sliding down on the slippery leather couch. I adjust myself, pressing against him.
“Maybe don’t do that,” he growls against my earlobe, his deep voice humming through my veins.
And all the easiness dissipates as I realise just how tightly we’re pressed together, and that it’s not his thigh bone jabbing into my arse.
Ishouldmove. I should. That’s the right thing to do. But even if I wanted to, I’m pinned in place by the bone-deepwanting.
So instead, I do the most un-Autumn Abernathy thing in the world, and instead of running from the danger and hiding in my safe little cottage, I turntowardsit.
I turn so that I’m gazing into the blue depths of his eyes, which reflect the flames of the fire immolating the last vestiges of my self-control. His tufts of reddish-orange hair stick out, wild, dangerous, a fey feline that won’t be tamed.
“Maybe I’m like you,” I whisper. “Maybe I’m more cat than I realise. Maybe I do exactly what I want because it feels good.”
I wiggle my hips.
My cheeks burn with heat. Whoisthis succubus that’s taken over my body?
Rafe makes a purring sound that is so catlike and yet not like a cat at all. There’s nothing about him right now that’s fuzzy or cute or chaotic. He’s looking at me like he can’t understand me, like he doesn’t know if I’m for eating, or for…something else.
And then his lips are on mine.
Unlike last time, there’s nothing soft about this kiss, no questions being asked, no hesitant testing of the waters. It crashes into me like a summer storm, warm and fierce and desperate, scouring away doubt and leaving me raw and thirsty andblooming.
His hand finds the back of my neck, holding me as though I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s tipped sideways. I taste sweet mead on his tongue and something else, something darker and so perfectlyhim, something that makes a feral moan escape my lips.
Every sensible thought dissolves beneath the warmth of him, beneath the rough catch of his breath and the quiet, involuntary purr rumbling against my lips.
And I can’t deny it. I can’t pretend. He wants me, and I want him, and for one impossible, reckless heartbeat, the rest of the world simply…falls away. There are no curses or missing husbands or impossible futures. Just him. Just this.
I kiss him back with everything I’ve been swallowing for years, and he answers with a tiny, broken sound that unravels me.
Then he jerks away.
The absence of his lips is a bereavement, so sudden that my body still leans towards where he used to be. Cold air rushes into the space he’d filled only moments before.
I lean forward, thinking he’s only trying to get comfortable, but it slowly dawns on me that he’s sliding out from beneath me. He’s peeling off new shirt and tossing it into the corner.
He’s leaving.
He’s rejecting me.
Again.
“Oh,” I whisper. My cheeks flare with heat. My ears ring with the buzzing of humiliation. “Oh. I’m sorry?—”
“Don’t you be sorry,” he growls. “Don’t youdarebe sorry. I’m the scoundrel here, not you.”
I blink and blink, trying to force tears back into my eyes. Annoyingly, that’s not how tears work. “I read it all wrong, I thought you wanted?—”
Rafe turns to me, his eyes raking over my body from toes to nose with an intensity that makes me tremble. “You think I don’t want you? You, the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met, you, the person who makes me believe that I can be more than a criminal? You’re right, honey witch, I don’t want you. Want is not enough for the way Icraveyou, for the way your scent follows me into my dreams. But it doesn’t matter what I want,” he growls. “For all my natural charm, devastating good looks, and feline skulduggery, I’m cursed to live in a cat’s body, and you aresomeone else’s wife.”
“Warrick’s not coming back.”
“You don’t know that, and I may be a scoundrel who can now lick his own ballsack, but I’m not going to be the reason you cheat on him?—”
