Because Fi wanted this. She wanted more than the cottage in the woods where she’d hidden for seven years. She wanted to fix her world rather than flee from it. She wanted Antal’s scorching stares and the way he made her feel like she could hold her head as tall as an immortal.
She wantedhim.
This type of want, though, was a desperate thing, too dangerous to leave any detail assumed. Antal’s circling words and formal terms weren’t enough.
Fi’s fingers clawed his collar. “Say it. No flowery language, daeyari.Say it.”
She measured the shortness of his breath. His arm tightening at her waist. “Say what?”
“Say what you mean. Why should I go back with you?”
His frown was a delicious thing, frustration and worry chiseled into the hard lines of his brow. Then came the crack. Realization softened him to the lover who’d held her through the dawn, the confidant who’d brushed tears from her cheeks.
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Because Iwantyou to come back with me.”
Exactly what she needed to hear.
“More,” Fi ordered.
“I want you, Fionamara. I want you to be at my side.”
Fi fell into him until no space remained. She twined her fingers behind his neck, ozone mixed with a tang of blood. She didn’t care. She only cared about his arms around her, his heat warming her tired bones, the promise in his words. And yet she’d never undignify herself by sealing a deal so easy.
“I have conditions.”
“I dare say, I’m coming to see how you smugglers operate.” Antal’s tone was forcibly dry. Beneath it, a glint of amusement. “Let’s hear them.”
“I’ll be a thorn in your side,” Fi vowed.
“You think I can’t bear thorns, Fionamara? I haven’t plucked you out yet.”
“I’ll rip you to pieces.”
“Use your tongue half as often as your teeth, and I’ll relish every moment.”
Fi bared those teeth at his smugness, at how fiercely it made her want to kiss him. “Other daeyari will come. They’ll see you as weak, like Verne did.”
“Let them come. And we’ll prove them wrong.” Antal nipped the corner of her mouth, entreating. “Please, Fionamara. Come back with me.”
Bewitching creature. Fi could devour him, every taunt and promise, every time he stoked her heart with that soft grin.
“I’m human.”
She whispered her final caveat, almost too daunting to confess. Could he truly ask her to stand beside him? Not a tool by another name?
Antal cupped her chin, a rapturous look as he met her gaze. “And I shudder at any fool who’d dare doubt such a ferocious beast as you.”
That simple. As if he truly saw her as nothing less for what she was.
Fi dove into the kiss, no hesitation at the plunge, no fear at its depth nor how fiercely Antal’s mouth moved to consume her. He cupped the back of her neck, a rumbling sigh as she caught his lip in her teeth.
She emerged for the space of a breath.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to go back with you.”
Antal pulled her in this time, claws buried in the Void and rainbow curls of her hair, lips bruising. Every stroke of his mouth was a word of relief. The slick of his tongue, an acceptance. The claws bracing her ribs, a fire as desperate as the one he stoked in her. Fi pressed herself into him, hooked fingers between trousers and the hot skin of his waist, but she couldn’t drag herself close enough. An imminent problem.
One that would have to wait.
