“What happened toone time?” he said.
Hopeless from the start. Fi couldn’t pull away from him, couldn’t stop lidded eyes drifting back to his mouth.
“I guess I must be one dumb little rabbit,” she breathed.
Antal traced a thumb along her cheek, down the curve of her parted lips. Slow. Reverent. “You were never a rabbit.” His chuckle brushed like velvet. “You’ve always had sharp teeth.”
Fi was more interested inhissharp teeth. One time, be damned.
With a lunge, she was on top of him, straddling his lap as he sat on the edge of her bed. Her hands clawed his shoulders, pulling him into a deeper kiss. He cradled her cheeks, frustratingly light. Holding back.
“Fionamara,” he growled. A warning.
She stopped. Through speeding heart and shallow breaths, she registered him too tense beneath her, his tail flicking her bed, claws a whisper against her waist.
“What’s wrong?” she goaded. “I thought you wanted to have me again?”
“You made me promise. One time.” The words strained his teeth, a hiss of heat as he brushed his mouth to her jaw. “I need you to be more explicit.”
“Explicit?”
“About what you want.”
He spoke in anguish, dripping every ache she’d suffered thispast week. Fi leaned back. Stunned. After all his taunts, all his lewd comments and rakish looks, here she sat in his lap.
And he wouldn’t touch her without permission.
The power was fire in her blood, more intoxicating than ten rounds of juniper liquor. All those years of Fi’s life she’d spent terrified of daeyari, and now she had one dangling at her fingertips, watching with the keen eyes of a starving panther.
At last, she knew exactly what game they were playing.
She brushed her mouth to his. Not a kiss, but a whisper.
“Is this not explicit enough for you, Antlers?”
A growl rumbled his chest. His claws flexed, pricks against her waist, rigid with restraint. All those snarls and teeth, hiding a teddy bear underneath.
“No?” Fi dangled the question between them, innocent. “How about this?”
She pulled their hips together, moving the soft between her legs against the hard of him—and hewashard, a bulge tight against his trousers. Antal sucked in a breath. So did Fi. The last time they’d collided had passed in such fervor, she’d had no chance to drink this in, the way he arced his back to drag against her. The corded muscles of his neck as he tipped his head, eyes half-closed.
“Vicious woman.”
Anything in that desperate hiss would have the same effect: turning Fi’s insides to flame. She held her words steady.
“I told you I’d make you ask for it.”
She hooked a finger beneath his chin. Rolled her hips against him. Antal returned bared fangs, but she’d never seen his eyes so bright, so hungry. Not after she’d watched him eat. Not after the last time he’d fucked her.
“Fionamara.” Again, her name. This time like a plea.
“Yes, Antal?”
“Let me touch you.”
“Hmm…” She dragged her finger down his throat, splayed a palm over the swath of chest he’d left bare to taunt her. Energy simmered beneath his skin, a now-familiar current prickling her fingertips. “You’d like to touch me? I feel like you’re missing something.”
He growled again, crumbling into a groan as she pressed against him.
