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“You know…” My voice was conversational as she came to loom directly above me, like a mighty Amazon warrior—small and petite as she was—with her boots spread and expression tense with ire. Her lovely, pale hair drifted in the breeze, flitting over her shoulder and framing her face with the wrath of a woman good and pissed off.
“I can think of a whole host of less violent ways you could produce some kind of key from me,” I told her, my smile turning naughty. “Most of them, we’d both enjoy.”
“Is that right?” she murmured, leaning down over me.
I sucked in a breath, suddenly worried. She really could sweet-talk the key from me with no problem. I would do anything for this woman. Die for her, kill for her, protect her with everything I had. Opening a single book for her was nothing. But I wasn’t particularly eager for her to see some portions of my journal. She wouldn’t like what she found.
She inched closer, and suddenly I didn’t care if she saw what I’d written; I just wanted her to touch me. I wanted her to slide down into my lap, her thighs straddling my waist as she slipped her arms around my shoulders and cupped the back of my head to draw my mouth forward. And I wanted her to take my body into hers while she kissed the breath from my lungs.
Her eyes stayed locked on mine. My lips parted with need, and she reached right past me, snagging my pack of clothes.
I released a disappointed groan as she pulled away, then I straightened as she opened the end of my pack. When she upended everything, dumping my clothes and supplies all over the ground, my shoulders dropped with the weight of my frustration.
“This again? Really? How many times are you and your aunt going to tamper with my belongings?”
“As many times as it takes to find everything you’re hiding.”
“What makes you think I’m hiding anything?”
“Maybe because of the fact that you have a locked book that you refuse to open and show us what’s inside.”
“I never said I refused to open it.”
She stopped pawing through my things and looked up.
I smiled. “You just haven’t asked in the right way yet.”
With a growl, she dropped my shaving kit and savagely grabbed a handful of my hair. “Listen here, asshole. You can act like this is some game all you like—”
“I don’t see it as a game,” I promised, my voice going low as I gazed into her eyes. I’d never been this close to them before. They were stunning. “Whoa. You have little golden flecks in the irises of your brown eyes; did you know that?”
The breath left her lungs. “What?”
“They’re really pretty,” I swore. “But I think I like the dark brown ring around them more. It fades in slowly toward the pupil. It’s like a piece of artwork. And what is that?” I leaned a centimeter closer, squinting as I did. “Is that a single blue dot among the gold and brown in there? It is.” I shook my head in wonder. “So incredible.”
“Stop looking at my eyes,” she hissed, except she didn’t move away like she should, since that would be the most effective way to keep me from seeing what she claimed she didn’t want me to see. She simply stared back into my eyes as heartily as I was staring into hers. Which made me think she really did like me looking at her.
Anticipation roared through her emotion, and it tasted like sweet nectar on my mark.
I licked my lips and leaned toward her. “I think I’d rather die than stop looking at your eyes.”
Her jaw hardened as if she hated what I said, and the grip she had in my hair tightened threateningly. But the eagerness I experienced through the mark spoke otherwise. She wanted this just as much as I did.
“I didn’t get a chance to really taste you when you saved me,” I murmured, my face tipping toward hers, our cheeks almost touching. “I really think we should remedy that.”
“I don’t,” she countered. But she stayed where she was, and her breath quickened.
“Quilla.” I groaned and pressed my brow to hers until our mouths aligned and a single breath separated us.
She made a needy, hungry sound deep in her throat. I closed my eyes and leaned in.
But her lips never touched mine.
“What’s this?”
Her fingers landed on the leather strap around my throat. She must’ve seen the truth there in the flash of surprise as I opened my lashes, because suddenly, she tugged at the thin leather rope, pulling a spear-shaped pendant out from under my tunic and ripping it right off my neck.
“Wait, no!” I grasped her wrist, stopping her.
