Page 228 of The Sun He Buried

The answer enters the bond before I speak.

Her pupils widen.

I release her hand.

“Keep going.”

Her thumb touches the black line.

Fire runs across my jaw.

I close my eyes.

She traces the sigil over my lower lip, careful around the blood. The bond gives her every ugly part of the touch: the pain, the want beneath it, and the terror I’ve spent centuries making unavailable.

“You’re afraid of me.”

“A popular response.”

“Liar.”

Her thumb presses harder.

I open my eyes.

She receives what that does too.

Her breath catches.

“Tell me what you want,” I say.

“You.”

“Poor judgment.”

“Kiss me.”

I take her by the jaw and kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since she walked in and wouldn’t leave, and the bond doubles it before our mouths settle—my want pouring into her, hers coming back, so the first taste of her hits me twice.

Hell.

I back her into the old table. Wood scrapes stone. The dead brazier’s still on its side where it rolled off; her hip knocks it another inch across the floor.

She fists both hands in my shirt and pulls like she’s furious about it. She is. Good. I don’t want easy. I want her exactly like this—shaking, furious, choosing me anyway with both hands.

Her teeth catch my lower lip. The open sigil splits under them and my blood reaches her tongue, and the sound she makes at the taste of it goes straight down the bond and turns over, low and hot, inside her.

“Do it again.”

She bites down harder, takes the blood into her mouth like she means to keep it, and the want that comes back through me has teeth of its own.

With the silver off my face I get the whole settlement at once—hundreds of minds pushing, wanting, lying about it. She’s louder than all of them. She’s got her knees open around me, and they might as well not exist.

I get her onto the table, one hand fisted in her hair until her throat bares under my mouth. She arches into it—gives me her pulse without being asked, and the hunger stands straight up against the want. I make both of them wait.

I want her out of all of it first.

I undress her slow, and I make her feel every second of it. The blue dress off her shoulders, down her arms, gone. The fastening at her hip gives with a dead little snap on the way.