Page 116 of The Hunted

“Hmm?”

“For a brief second, I get to see you still trembling, as sweet as a newborn kitten for a graze of my fingers in your hair. For a moment … I don’t want to kill you.”

A grin fettered over her lips. “Do you want me to complain about the last bit? Can’t say that’s a bad thing when it means my heart still beats.”

His dark chuckle skipped across her jaw before he muttered, “And just like that, you make me go back to wanting to strangle you.”

“You do know that threat has never scared me, don’t you?” she asked.

“I do—I enjoy that in a very distorted way, too. And so, as I was trying to explain, if fucking you fixes everything for even a few moments, where we get to be just this and not the rest, it is worth it.”

Arelle’s heart thundered loud and those silken touches of his continued. Eryx was not the type of man who enjoyed his charming sweetness to be pointed out to him. He much preferred the arrogant, spoiled prince persona that he’d carefully crafted for the rest of the world to see.

But he softened when he knew she needed him to.

Like now.

As a mate should do for the soul’s other half.

So, instead of saying thank you for what he’d done, or even acknowledging his tenderness, she gave Eryx the thing he seemed to need to keep his vulnerabilities hidden: the sharp-tongued, challenging little mermaid he wanted to kill as much as he wanted to fuck.

Arelle cleared her throat, her tongue peeking out to wet the seam of her lips. “Well, you better figure out how you want to hold this ruined gown for me before you get me to the bedchambers and show me all that distorted way you mentioned.”

“Are you still sad?” he asked.

The heaviness in her shoulders had left for the time being. All that sadness roaring in her heart for the sea she so dearly missed was a dull echo.

He had fixed it.

For a moment.

She knew, however, the calm between every storm only lasted for so long.

Still, she answered him honestly. “No, I’m not still sad.”

TWENTY-SIX

Eryx

“HAVE YOU settled on a book yet?”

Arelle glanced over her shoulder at him. A teasing glint lit up her violet eyes before she went right back to surveying the rows of bookshelves in the room where they were kept at the stable estate. He’d made a promise to teach her how to read though he didn’t quite know how to teach anyone anything.

Thing was, she learned quick.

And he found he liked her smile.

“This one, I think,” she finally said.

Eryx couldn’t discern which book she pulled from the shelves with her body blocking his view, but that was just fine, too, when it gave him a glorious view of her trimmed waist and the way the silk skirts of her dress fell over the curve of her ass. “Is it a good one? It’ll need to be a good one to keep my attention long enough that you can read a bit before I get you into bed again.”

She turned her head just enough for him to see the sensual curve of her lips that said she liked that idea of his just fine. “You have to let me read a bit first.”

“A bit, then. Fine.”

“And it’s an old one. I don’t know if it’s any good.”

“What is the title?”