Fi bellowed bravado. She needed it, to hide how breathless he’d made her. A daeyari. He was adaeyari, and her stupid brain hadn’t figured out how to counter him yet, and that wasall.
Atop her, Antal blinked. “You want me… to go harder on you?”
To Fi’s abject horror, a blush heated her cheeks. “Well, not when you put it likethat.”
“How should I put it?”
He mantled over her. Fi tensed as he braced a hand besideher head. A snarl pulled her lips as he closed the space between them.
“You’d prefer I try to rip you open in earnest?” he said. The threat came out different this time. Somehow softer and rougher and far more dangerous.
Fi scoffed. “I thought we were playing nice.”
“You came at me with a sword.”
“Don’t be dramatic, daeyari. You’re more useful to me alive. For now.”
“Am I?”
The way he stared at herfeltlike being ripped open.
Then he laughed.
For the second time, Fi startled at that genuine laugh, this intimate thing she didn’t know how to parry. The gesture was so insultingly soft, so wretchedly disarming, itmustbe some cunning new tactic. The daeyari’s snarls hadn’t cowed her, so he resorted to this trickery? She mustered every barb, just to stop herself smiling back.
Instead, Fi stared at his mouth. When he laughed, when his lips curved into that grin again, even fangs didn’t seem as vicious. They hadn’t been, when they were on her throat.
“You can let me go now.” Fi squirmed beneath him. A mistake. His weight against her hips made her cheeks burn hotter.
“I thought you didn’t want me to go easy on you?” Antal sat upright again, pinning her firmer, arms held taunting at his sides. “Shouldn’t I let you thwart me on your own?”
This was, Fi decided, far more insufferable than if he’d just try to eat her and be done with it.
“You’re enjoying this,” she accused. “You prefer your prey cowering? Is that it?”
“Hardly,” he purred. “I prefer the ones who stand their ground.”
His words rumbled Fi’s chest, through the soft of her belly, down into…
She couldn’t sit still. With a growl of her own, Fi gripped Antal’s shirt for an anchor. She pulled herself up. Surprise lit his eyes as she held their faces an inch apart.
“Careful what you ask for, daeyari.”
She grabbed an antler.
Pulling him off balance was easy, with the leverage. Flipping him was harder. Antal’s build was lean, but Fi felt every muscle tense against her. She heaved, throwing him to the snow, her thighs pinning his waist just as he’d done to her. Then,sheperched atop this immortal.Sheheld him down by his antlers.
The bastard’s smirk made her want to carve him alive.
“Sofierce,” Antal taunted. “For someone who smells like pomegranates.”
His grin cut through her, even on the ground—especiallyon the ground, his dark hair mussed by their scuffle.
Absolutely not. Fi could not have this kind of reaction to a daeyari, of all things. He had fangs… which scraped surprisingly soft. Claws… that had tangled in her hair.
And this wouldn’t be the first time she’d fallen for antlers.
Fi snarled and pressed her sword hilt to his chest, an angle that would have skewered his heart had the blade been Shaped.
