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He seized her hair, winding it round his hand, and tugging back her head to get at her neck. His teeth nibbled at her ear, his tongue drifting down her throat, her collarbones.
Her fingers graced his chin, feather-soft. She couldn’t get used to feeling him this way, couldn’t quite let herself believe she was allowed to, that this moment wasn’t fleeting but the first of many, hundred,forever. Her skin still trembled against his, tight, tiny goosebumps. When would it end? This strange, unquiet bliss, this fearful desperate want? The need to touch him, to be touched?
She wasn’t sure she wanted it to end. Let her feel this way forever, even if it destroyed her.
Her hands drifted over his features, down his throat, over his shoulders, his back. Her tips traced the veins in his arms, every muscle, every sinew. She wanted to colour every inch of him with her fingerprints.
Mine, mine, mine.
Impossible. Ludicrous.Real.
The softest, briefest of smiles brushed Hawthorn’s cheeks, devoid of all sin, all mischief. “You are thinking beautiful thoughts, wife, and I would hear them.”
“I am thinking that I am an idiot for hating you for so long when I wanted you so badly… when Istillwant you. When I want you so much I think I’ll die from it. When I want to touch youeverywhere.”
The sinfulness flickered back, although tempered with something else. “You have my full permission.”
“I do so love to explore…” She raked her hands down his back so hard it was almost painful, and he dug his fingers into her flesh, murmuring incomprehensible words that somehow conveyed every thought he’d kept hidden all this time.
She bit the end of his ear, and whispered sweet words into him as her fingers explored the long, silken inches of him, making his breath hitch. Gasping, he flipped her over onto her back and put his elegant fingers to use, teasing and playing at her soft folds until she was a quivering, pulsing mess, begging to have him inside her.
They connected in a flurry of action, the kind that sent sensation stuttering, turning thought to putty. Desire raged inside her, his skin like fire. She brought his mouth to hers and kissed him until her lips went numb, legs locked around him, hips swaying beneath his.
This is so, so much better than fighting with him.
When it was over, she drew him to her damp breast, his fingers playing with the end of her hair. She never wanted to move from this spot, or move at all unless it was to yank him inside her again.
“I love you,” she told him again.
Hawthorn grinned against her chest. “I believe you.”
When she finally closed her eyes, it was to the sound of their shared heartbeat, and the knowledge that he’d still be here in the morning.
And always, always would be.
Ladriensatintheruins of the ancient winter court, little more than piles of blackened stone and rubble, and shivered down to his bones. He had never liked the cold. Even without the power to transform, the weaknesses of his dragonish half were ever-present. The cold scraped inside him.
He had lost everything. Everything he had worked to build for centuries, all because of a couple ofchildrenwho hadn’t even seen the change of a hundred years.
He had underestimated Juliana Ardencourt. Perhaps that was his mistake. Her father had raved about her—how she was smart and cunning, the finest swordsperson he had ever trained. Mortal parents often boasted about their children. They were usually wrong.
But Markham hadn’t been. He’d been right to be proud.
Ladrien had pondered on the words of his banishment since it began, searching for a loophole. Love was out of the question. He neither wanted it nor knew how to get it.
But he would not sit here for a hundred years. Faerie needed him.
You will raise no armies,Prince Hawthorn had declared.
Ladrien thought of Markham and Juliana, and then, with a silent smile, an idea came to him at last.
If he could not raise an army, he’d raise something else instead.
