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“It’s true, then?”
“The Nine died with my father, Elisabeth. All but for Máelodor.”
“He knew your father?”
He closed his eyes for a brief moment. The voices, the faces, the memories pounding in his brain with each throb of his shoulder. “Once upon a time, they were close as brothers. The two of them shared a great pride in their Fey heritage and the powers borne with that blood legacy.”
“And then?” Her eyes shone black in the candlelight, deep midnight wells he could drown in. She shifted impatiently, the collar of her robe gaping to reveal the slope of her shoulder and the deep curve of one breast.
He needed to end this conversation and get her out of here before either he spoke of things best left unsaid or acted on urges best left unacted upon. “Father was murdered. Máelodor fled. The Nine were no more.”
“And the Sh’vad Tual?”
His mouth curved in a suggestive smile. “Rested in the perfect curve of the perfect breasts of a beautiful lady for seven years.”
He could almost feel the daggers shooting from her eyes. Exactly what he looked for. Yet instead of turning tail, she pressed further. A damned dog with a bone. “If both of you are out to destroy Máelodor, perhaps you and Helena could come to an understanding.”
“Who said anything about destroying Máelodor? I’m out to stay alive long enough to deliver the stone to safety. Destroying Máelodor I’ll leave to the professionals.”
“But—”
“If we’re going to exchange pillow talk”—his gaze drifted over her before traveling to the thick colorful blankets, the bevy of pillows—“I’m not up to outrageous gymnastics, but I could manage in a pinch.”
Her face flooded with scarlet, full lips squashing to a prim line, chin lifting in a belligerent tilt. “I’m going to assume you’re delirious with fever. That, or it’s as I suspected all along, and you’re raving bonkers.”
His gaze slid over the ripe curvature of hip, torso, and breasts. The trace of girlish freckles almost swallowed by a scarlet flush. He gritted his teeth as parts of him went rock-hard. “Merely curious. Had things worked out differently you and I—”
“Would have murdered each other by now.” She cleared her throat. “Can we please concentrate on the topic at hand? Helena Roseingrave? The stone? A way to untangle ourselves from this mess?”
“So we’re still a ‘we,’ Lissa?” he asked softly. Invitingly.
Her eyes shone dark and luminous, the candle’s reflection flickering in their velvet depths. Or did he imagine that ever-so-slight glimmer? That shuttered gaze trailing over his bare chest to linger for a moment upon the tattoo trailing over his shoulder? That taut pause lasting a beat too long?
He wanted to touch her. To feel that skin beneath his hands. To trace a path with his lips over the body he could imagine lay beneath the virginal white of her chemise.
He couldn’t help himself. He risked releasing his grip on the bedpost to step toward her, clenching his teeth in what, to her, must have looked like a particularly wolfish smile, since she scurried back as if she thought he was about to fling himself on her.
“Stop it.”
He leaned closer, his lips inches from hers, the scent of her skin filling his nostrils. She smelled of lemons and lavender and very faintly of desire and temptation. “Lissa?”
“Why do you ruin everything?” She shuddered, her voice almost a mew of pain. “Why are you such a beast?”
She threw open the door to escape, her robe dragging behind her like a train, her plait twitching like an angry cat’s tail.
He fell wobbly legged into a chair, shoulder throbbing at the same rapid tempo as his heart. Leaning his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut, the imprint of that luscious hourglass figure burned into his eyelids. The sweep of heat washing up from his groin to his brain not completely fever-related.
Why indeed?
Elisabeth retraced her steps, angry with herself and furious at Brendan.
He was a horrid, annoying beast.
Couldn’t he be serious for five minutes? Five bloody minutes! That’s all she asked.
Are we still a “we”?
The way he’d said it as if he meant it. The way his stare torched a path over her body. The slide of silken muscles as he reached for her, the sensual curve of his lips as he smiled.
