Page 144 of Taken By Shadows

I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t really care. This was the freest I had felt, possibly ever. And it was a confounding feeling to find that with the male who had been the one to take me in the first place.

My head jerked back from him as a door creaked open somewhere behind us.

Both of us were on alert in an instant, but it was Kaed who put his finger to his lips.

“Worried we’ll get caught in here?” A vixen’s grin slashed across my face.

I felt giddy as a thrill chimed through me. I pulled in a lung full of air as if I were going to scream, but I didn’t make a sound.

Kaed’s hand clamped down on my mouth and stifled any noise.

I hadn’t really wanted to scream. But I enjoyed seeing his instincts to protect me come out.

My eyes smiled up at him through heavy lashes, but he didn’t remove his hand.

“I didn’t think you hated my company that much that you’d try to get me caught again.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I said, sliding his hand from my mouth.

There was a rumble like the storm had followed us in, and I felt that crackle in my blood as Kaed’s magic flared under his skin.

Another noise sounded somewhere behind the palms and trees and echoed through the glass structure.

“Maybe … I just wanted to see what you’d do,” I purred.

I looked up to Kaed, whose eyes were searching for the lie in what I was saying. The trick. But there was none.

I was enjoying this.

“Protecting you from yourself might be a more demanding job than protecting you from me. But I think I’m up for the challenge.” His voice vibrated through me as he dropped it to a seductive murmur.

Gods, those lips when he said things like that. They made me want to throw myself on him and taste every bit of him.

His hands rested on me. And I let mine explore the expanse of him. Testing. Teasing. Playing.

Maybe I would scream. What would he do then? The wicked thought took over, and I took another breath.

His hand shot back to cover my mouth, and something delicious coiled inside me at the contact.

“Are you trying to invite trouble, peach?”

“Maybe … Or maybe I just wanted to see if you’d do that again.” My lips parted as I sucked his finger deep into my mouth. My eyes never leaving his.

A feral sort of noise issued from Kaed.

I was in so much trouble. In every sense of the word.

He pulled his finger from my mouth slowly and traced the line of my lips.

I felt I had stumbled into a private world. Opened a door to a realm I didn’t know the rules of. Didn’t understand everything in it. But somehow, it felt like I should be here. In Kaed’s arms. Under the intense stare of those endless ocean eyes.

The longer I stayed in this world, the harder it was to remember where I came from, though. Or where I had once thought I needed to go. And he’d now offered to help me find what I’d set out for in the first place. It was that. That tiny but monumental gesture had opened this part of me to him.

A woman in a white petticoat and rust-coloured apron rounded the corner and gave a little gasp as she took in the sight of us cloistered in the greenery. I thought she’d drop the clay pot she was carrying, but she clutched it as if she might hide behind it.

She’d come upon us just as Kaed’s hand slid from my mouth and found a resting place on the front of my neck. He deftly moved to cradling my neck instead of preparing to grip it.

Thankfully, the woman moved on through the glass house; she must have been hoping to disappear into the foliage as she skittered off.