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“I have more than you!” I gripped his arms. “Pritkin, you can use my power to heal—” I stopped because he was wearing an expression that I’d never seen before. It looked a little like terror.
“This is precisely what happened last time!” he said harshly, his eyes skittering to the wall, the monitors, the wastebasket in the corner. Everywhere but my face. “You saw the house. It was even more isolated then, with nothing for miles but fields and water and forest. There was no one to help, no one to hear her scream!”
And it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn’t his own death that had him looking like he wanted to bolt. It was mine. He drew in air, his face strained, and a flush darkened the skin of his neck. “You don’t understand the risk,” he said more calmly.
“Your father tried to kill me. Believe me, I understand.” It had been added to my regular nightmare list, that horrible, sucking, draining sensation that had my flesh wanting to shudder off the bone. But that had been Rosier. Pritkin hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. He’d lost control with his wife because no one had warned him about what might happen. But he knew the risk now.
Which is why he wasn’t going to take it.
It was written in the glint in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils, the jut of his chin. “I can’t lose you!” I told him, feeling defiant and miserable and furious all at once.
“I promise—you won’t. I’ll follow you. But you and Jonas have to—”
“I didn’t want to do this,” I said, cutting through the obvious lie. “But you’re not leaving me a lot of choice. This is my call and I’m making it. Do what you need to heal.”
“Yours?” It was if he’d put all the frustration he felt into a single glare. “How precisely is it yours?”
“Oh. So suddenly I’m not Pythia?”
“That has nothing to do with this!”
“It has everything to do with it! You’re a war mage sworn to my service who thinks he doesn’t have to actually do anything I tell you! And yes,” I said, as he opened his mouth, “I know you have a lot more knowledge and experience, which is why I listen to you most of the time. But you’re wrong about this because you’re too emotional to see that the risk has to be taken. So I’m making the decision—which, since I’m Pythia and it’s my body, is my right.”
I set my hand against his thigh, surprised by the heat of skin on skin. Pritkin twitched and looked at me, lips parted and eyes a little wild. “I warned you once before what someone looks like when an incubus has drained them completely. Do you truly want to risk that?”
“I’m a big fan of safe,” I told him quietly. “I really prefer it to sorry. But in this case, yeah. I’m willing to risk it.”
“I don’t know that I am,” he said thickly.
And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I closed the distance between us, slammed him back against the chair and kissed him, holding his head still with both my hands buried in that stupid, stupid hair. I half expected more resistance, because Pritkin had never met an argument he didn’t like. So it was a shock when he ran his hands down my sides, cupped my hips and slid us both to the floor.
“I’m going straight to hell for this,” he muttered.
“At least you’ll know a lot of people,” I said breathlessly. And then I couldn’t talk at all because his mouth had settled hot and fierce over mine.
I pulled his shirt off over his head and then let my hands wander. I wrapped one around his neck, running fingers into his hair. It was soft and silky—always a surprise—and slightly damp, like the skin below. I used the other to smooth down that powerful body, strong and filigreed with black ink and silver scars. It was almost as familiar as my own, and yet suddenly, it felt very different.
I followed a ripple of solid muscle over the hard chest to the flat belly, and then dropped to the light dusting of hair that pointed to even more interesting areas. But Pritkin intercepted my hand, pulling it away from him. “Don’t,” he said roughly.
“Why?”
> “Because I have to remain in control, Miss Palmer, or this will go very bad, very quickly.”
“If you call me that one more time,” I said seriously, and then forgot where I was going with it when his mouth moved to my neck. His lips trailed a line down the side of my throat and along the curve of my shoulder before closing over a spot he liked and starting to suck.
I was quickly reminded of how determined Pritkin could be. Once he got his mind set on something, he was quite . . . single-minded, and right then, he was focused on driving me crazy. He was doing a pretty good job, somehow managing to get my shirt off and my bra unhooked one-handed, a calloused thumb lightly brushing a nipple.
I returned the favor, raking my nails through the dark blond hair on his chest, finding a little nub that went hard under my fingertips. I played with it until he pushed that hand away, too. I gave a moan of frustration and moved on, my hands sliding over bare, hot skin, finding the smooth punctuation of scars, pressing fingers bruise-hard into muscle and bone. There was no softness anywhere, except the velvet of his skin, the touch of his mouth.
My lips slid down the edge of one of the old, pale scars on his shoulder, feeling the faint ridge under my tongue. “Please,” Pritkin said hoarsely, and I smiled against his skin. “Don’t,” he added, and my patience broke.
“Pritkin! Sex pretty much requires losing control, at least a little!”
“This isn’t sex.”
I blinked. “Oh. Then what is it?”
“An emergency!”
