Page 165 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“I can't believe she has kept you here all day. Go rest Lara, is past bedtime for you. Stop by the dining chambers first for a meal,” I ordered, ruffling her yellow head.

She smiled and nodded. “I begged her to let me stay, I just love watching her.”

So did I.

Just as she left, I turned to the reckless princess. She must be overthinking and brewing on what she saw yesterday, I knew talking with Nia would have helped soothe her worries but she was still not giving up.

“Still angry, dahaara?” I called, assessing the sight of her. Amazing or terrifying, I tried to jungle the two words to describe her, only to ended up settling on both; there was never just one word to describe her.

She halted her movement and turned to me. Gods, I was doomed, completely doomed. Beads of sweat coated her porcelain skin, and matted the dark hair to her forehead and neck like climbing black wisteria. She had shed down to her tight breeches that cinched to her thighs and a vest that had completely soaked tight to her skin. Lean muscle and curves, she was like a feline. She moved a bandaged hand up to tuck a bunch of hair behind her ear, giving me way to fully immerse into her striking eyes. Thank the heavens for those concentration practice sessions that I had gone through during my training, otherwise I would have blankly stared at her raw beauty till she would have laughed herself to death. Nothing would have satisfied her more than my gawking.

“Working on it,” she said, turning to the soldier in front of her. She stomped in his knee with her heel before she jumped spun a high kick that sent him flying back down to the ground.

“Need help? Who better than I to unleash your anger, and I did offer to teach where to point the sharp end of a dagger,” I said, hoisting myself up to the pit and shed my jacket.

Her eyes roamed all over me, halting to my arms as I folded my sleeves. She looked at me just the same as she looked at food, full of relish and hunger. How I wished it didn’t tempt me to do the same. “For a moment I thought my ears had betrayed me, you do joke on purpose besides to offend me. Fascinating,” she teased, leaning to rest onto the pit wooden borders.

“And you joke too much.”

She narrowed her eyes on me, pushing herself from where she rested, gesturing a hand for me to approach. She didn't hesitate to throw her foot in the air towards my thigh where it met my hand, tricking me before she spun into the air as if invisible wings carried her up and her other foot hit my shoulder, making me stumble back from impact. We pushed and pulled several times, she was exquisite, but I could see she was tired. Her fist flew forward and I grabbed it into my hand. It made me laugh, the size of her hand to mine looked adorable, but I appeared to have angered her as she twisted under my arm before her heel met the back of my knee that threw me kneeling to the ground. I attempted to turn, but she rounded her legs around my waist, twisting me down flat to the ground. She laid on top of me, her dagger over my neck.

She blew a flyway of hair, brows narrowed on me in puzzlement. “You let me.”

“I didn’t.” A lie, I did. She might have eventually managed to put me down, but she had been out here exhausting herself from the brink of morning, with no rest and no food. The quicker this ended, the quicker I could get food in her empty stomach.

“Why did I enjoy it better when this was the other way around?” she said, a sly smirk wearing her pretty lips. “I like your hands better over my throat, maybe further down too and your mouth—” Her gaze darted over my lips, staying there. “Everywhere.”

But that was all it was. A want. A like and needed, nothing beyond to act on. She was drunk in her fatigue and I held her—the one who made me drunk with her sound, her sight, and her smile. But two intoxicated truths made for a burning hangover. To act on it, she would wretch regret and I longing.

“Enough, this is your burnout talk.”

She giggled, her breaths tired. “It might be, what else should I say? What do you want to hear while my tongue is all loose? Here you have me all sincere.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing that you cannot tell me usually. I won’t force them out of you anymore.” I wanted the truths of her soul, not jagged confessions of the stomach.

“Aren’t you so righteous?” She lowered her lips to hover just above mine, and I hope she hadn’t taken notice of my furious lungs, the strain of my hands digging on the ground.

I grabbed onto her, flipping us over and her under me before I’d let my will slip away and my need slide in. She yelped and laughed shortly. Lifting her dagger she traced a line along my jaw. Brush of unfelt pain, she was like the dagger holding, always brushing me, so close to pain. If I dared to feel her closer, I’d bleed.

She stopped atop my chin. “Hello, handsome.”

“Hello, gorgeous.” I pushed strands of black away from her eyes before running my thumb to straighten her brow. “Let’s get you up.”

Yet she stilled, unmoving, eyes lost, dazed as if spelled. Nothing like her, nothing I’d seen before. Her dagger still moving along my jaw and I gripped her wrist to make her stop. She gasped and I felt the tip graze my skin. A drop of my blood dripped in her cheek, like a tear it rolled over and she shut her eyes tight, as if the sight of it terrified her. She threw her dagger away and gripped my face examining the cut intently.

“It is fine, Snow,” I said, wiping the red stains from her cheek.

Next thing I know she pulled my face down to her mouth. Warm full lips resting atop the cut, her tongue gently sweeping atop it before she gently sucked on the cut. Planting a small peck atop, she pushed me back. All my senses lost at the feel of her lips on my skin, spear of heat cursing my body and I felt myself shift tighter in my breeches.

She licked her lip. “You do taste sweet too.” Heavens. A temptress, she had become my temptress and I—I was still her enemy.

My lungs demanded more air, my body demanded her, and I could not hold it in anymore. Tilting her face where I wanted it to be, I lowered my lips to hers, stopping short once I felt her body stiffen. Her breath matching mine while she stilled under me, like thunder at halt, gurgling storms beneath. I wanted to be inside that storm, to taste her rain, feel the hail, let my skin dance around the lightning, but this was an August shower, forced and unnatural. A thunder of scorching panic.

She gripped my shirt while I made to move away. “Why?”

I gathered all scrap of will to admit what she wouldn’t. “You’d hate it—you’d hate it terribly.”

Something I could not read flashed in her eyes and frowned her expression. Regret, realization? “Yes,” she spoke in almost a whisper. “Yes, I’d hate it. Terribly…tremendously, hate it.” She blinked slow and lost staring at me, and I finally moved away, her words weighed against my chest, and it almost hurt. I knew that truth, why did it strike strange to hear it aloud?