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Melody’s life was built around sensation. What she could touch, what she could feel.
Nothing had ever prepared her for this.
For a mouth on hers, the scrape of his tongue, and the glory of the flames that licked all over her.
She was made new. She was forever changed.
She met the thrust of his wicked tongue, pressing herself against him with sheer, heady abandon, because every touch made it better. Hotter.
So much wilder and all-consuming than she’d ever imagined.
And she thought she might be perfectly happy to die like this—
But he stopped.
Griffin tore his mouth from hers, and then rested his forehead there, pressed against hers. It was a new spark. A different, quieter fire.
“I don’t want to stop,” she managed to pant out, surprised to hear she sounded as out of breath as if she’d just survived one of Fen’s more brutal training sessions.
She could feel the change in his body, in the way he held her. He set her away from him, as if he was deliberately creating space. And then maintaining it.
“That should never have happened,” he said, stiffly.
But Melody could hear what lay beneath it. All that same heat that was still storming through her, still making her burn with that wildfire that was only his. Why would anyone step away from that?
“Why ever not?” she asked, genuinely confused. “Aren’t we supposed to be married?”
Griffin was turning her when she didn’t wish to be turned. But there was no fighting it unless she intended to truly fight, so she allowed it. He tucked her hand back in his elbow and then, suddenly, he was walking her across the courtyard at a brisk pace he’d never used before.
As if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her.
Melody didn’t like the way that notion twisted around inside her.
“Am I to take the silence as an indication that we are not, in fact, married?” she asked tartly.
And as she did, wondered when exactly it was she’d last pretended to be the wife the King and her own sister had asked her to be. When had she last cowered or cringed?
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not now.
Not when she could taste him.
Griffin did not speak again until he’d marched her to the door of her room.
“That should not have happened,” he said again. Stiffly. Formally. Annoyingly. “It will not happen again. You have my word.”
“I don’t want your word.”
“Nonetheless, it is yours. I keep my promises, Melody.” She could hear the storm in him then, dark and ferocious. It made her heart clench tight in her chest. “Whatever else might be true about me, I keep my promises.”
“As good men do,” she whispered, though she shouldn’t have.
Griffin made a low noise, but he did not reply. Instead, he turned swiftly and left her there, half fire and half fury, to burn out on her own.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEWIFEHE’Dnever wanted and shouldn’t have noticed much now he had her...was driving him mad.
It was the morning of New Year’s Eve. As was his time-honored tradition, Griffin was chasing out the old year with the kind of punishing workout he usually reserved for whipping himself into shape after disappearing into too much debauchery for too long. Who could have predicted that a spate of abstinence would make the particular punishment he doled out to himself on this day...worse?
