Page 95 of Heart of Thieves

Stars damn me.

I pull her mouth to mine.

It’s as soft and delicious as I remember. A faint sweetness of something she must have eaten after supper. Supple and slow and sensuous.

Her tongue slips between my lips, skating against my own, and my body ignites.

Every word she’s spoken, every time her curves have brushed up against me on this hoop . . . I’ve been teetering on the edge of an oblivion that won’t just claim me—it’ll claim Laurel and, in turn, everyone I love. Everyone I care about. Everyone in Aethera.

But with just one plea, the man inside me who has craved her since the moment I met her shudders. When she tugs my hair, he lifts his head. When she pulls her torso flush against mine, it’s all I can do to keep him tamped down.

This kiss cannot be too passionate. Already, Laurel’s leeching into my limbs. My arms stiffen. My fingers go solid. My head pulls back. She may be allowing this, but for how much longer?

If I want to stay in control, if I want to keep everyone safe, I need to lift Lola from my lap and set her down, gather my things and leave.

But she is stunning. With stage-light glow glinting in her hair, her blue eyes dancing, her cheeks flushed pink, and her lips so full and soft. Her tongue twines with mine as she angles her head to deepen our kiss, and I find my hands fisting in her hair, dragging her harder and deeper against me in spite of all the warnings blaring in my head.

The hoop is still twirling, slow and steady, and I’ve always had a high spin tolerance, but with her clinging to me like this, I’m suddenly dizzy, instinct taking over.

I release her hair, and she arches, eliciting an involuntary groan from deep within me. My hand skates down her spine until it splays against her hip. I squeeze once, then draw it lower to where her skirt has ridden up, teasing it higher to caress the bare skin of her upper knee with my thumb and then farther still to grasp the curve of her muscular thigh.

She whimpers into my mouth, and Laurel ignites in me, unfurling hot and fierce and suddenly desperate. A thrill, a passion, a pain.

I have gone too far.

I should pull away from Lola while I still can. Stop before Laurel takes hold and does something I can’t undo. Leave before I damn myself.

But Lola’s arms tighten around my neck, and her lips move to my ear. Her tongue swirls along the outer curve.

Gods.

I battle Laurel back with everything I am, desperate to hang on to this moment for just one minute—just one kiss—longer. I hoist Lola tightly against me and swing down from the hoop, crashing her onto the mat beneath me. My pulse roars in my ears.

Fire licks through me as Laurel scrabbles for purchase.

“Not yet,” I growl, hoping Laurel can hear it.

“What?” Lola gasps, but I press my mouth against hers, pinning her into the mat.

My hands shake as they rove over her body, as one fists her hair, as the other drags at the buttons on her jacket. My heart slams quadrupletime as the fragile grip I have on the ice in my veins begins to thaw. As heat drowns me. As anger and fear and grief and wild, desperate want flood my soul.

I slide Lola’s arms out of her sleeves one at a time, breaking the kiss to draw desperate hands down both of her biceps as her mouth makes its way along my jaw.

“Do you believe me yet?” I breathe against her mouth, rocking against her.

“Almost,” she gasps, fingernails digging into my back. “I might need . . . some more . . . convincing . . .”

Her thick thighs tighten around my middle as I lower my weight against her.

Laurel claws through me, splintering along every nerve, and it is agony. She stops me midkiss, making my hands freeze where they’re knotted in Lola’s skirt.

But I. Am. Not. Done.

I hover over Lola, frozen in battle, body rigid.

“Nic?” Lola whispers, eyes darting back and forth between mine. “Are you all right?”

My tendons shred, my heart swells, my lungs freeze. If I resist for too much longer, my heart may short out, and though nothing else has been able to kill me since the moonshard broke on Laurel’s hands, its magic may be the one thing that could.