One
Unrecognizable Love
I try really hard notto take this situation out on the oblivious shifter seated across from me, the bright-white sunlight casting across his pale features until he himself looks like he’s carved from ice and snow. I try. Really I do. But every beastly thing he does pisses me off this morning.
The emotions that have spiraled through me in the twenty-four hours since we’ve arrived here have had so many ups and downs that I’m just exhausted. Being taken from my cell early this morning to be escorted into the largest dining room I’ve ever seen didn’t help. The room was empty, and I was alone for a total of three minutes before Rime slipped in.
I shift in my seat, and he huffs a breath, his frosty gaze glaring down in disgust at the demon blood that’s still coating my hand. My hands are offensive to him now that he’s different.
She chased the humanity from his mind. As well as his affection for me, it seems. The hard glare of his eyes a murderous glint that he reserves especially for me.
“You’re so pretentious now.” My voice carries into the silence of the grand sitting room.
The Attikan castle is cold, letting in too much of the icy winds outside, and I haven’t seen a single one of the magnificent fireplaces lit that decorate every single room. The one against the far wall sits blackened with ash, icicles collecting along the forgotten logs.
I shake my head at the man across from me who doesn’t acknowledge my ranting, and it only makes me rant even more. “As if your hands are sexy and flawless and I’m over here with peasant hands.” My attention drifts to Rime’s big hands, long fingers, and all the dirty things he’s ever done to me with those fingers flashes through my mind. “Like you’re so perfect.”
I fold my arms, and he follows the movement, his gaze lingering on the curve of my breasts, really looking at me with something more than disgust for the first time since the Solstice Queen attached that damn halo device around his head. Rime isn’t in there. He’s just a beast in a man’s body. So I shouldn’t like the way he’s watching me so much right now.
It’s the first bit of attention he’s even shown me. It reminds me of the way he used to look at me, the way he used to see me when I was a woman with no value in the world.
He used to look at me like he wanted me.
Just like he is in this moment.
The charred brick that lines the walls appears darker when I focus on his bright eyes. There’s something really wrong with me, because I lean forward in my chair, watching him watch the curves of my body with something less than hate in his gaze.
Is Rime in there?
His hand lifts, and I mirror his movement with so much hope strumming through my veins. I splay my fingers to take his, to touch him and just know he’s here in this terrible imprisonment that I got us into. I just need to feel him, to see he’s really still in there.
His big palm snatches my wrist so fast I gasp when he drags me into the table. He pulls me hard until the edge of the steely table bites into my thighs and I’m forced to fight against his violent grip.
“Rime,” I grind out, but he pulls me harder. “Rime” I shove at his hands, and for a moment we grapple and fumble with one another, but he never releases his painful grasp on me. “Bad, bad…” Shifter? Dragon? Mate? “Bad, boy.” Well that—that was not the right choice of words.
He’s seething heavy breaths through his teeth and I think all he really wanted was a fight all along. This man might kill me and I don’t know if I would save myself if it came down to a fight for our lives.
If it was a choice of me or him… I’d choose him. Over and over again.
I glance up at his glowing crown that encompasses his pale hair and then I’m climbing over the table and letting him drag me across the crystal-like countertop. He brings me to him, and I leap into his arms like the lovers we are. But it’s different. There isn’t a lover’s touch at all when he catches me. As he stumbles back, he continues to clutch my wrist, and his hand on my thigh is painful as he crushes my hips against his. When we fall, he rolls us immediately. I wrap my fingers around that fucking halo device but when I pull, it doesn’t budge. He’s pinning me down with his body, seemingly winning, but I have a goal. The goal here is to get this damn device off of my mate. But his goal is to fuck me, and mine is to save him, and both of us are failing rather miserably, and a seriously screwed-up form of bestiality is becoming a real threat right now, and I’m not doing the best job of pretending like it repulses me.
“Rime!”
I shove awkwardly at his face, and he growls into my pressing fingertips. Magic flares to life in my palm, and I hold him in place, forcing him to halt all of his powerful movements. For several seconds we just stare at one another, panting and trying to understand what the other wants.
“I-I need you here with me.” My voice cracks, and he doesn’t blink with my power wrapped around him. But he does listen. I mean, he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, but it feels nice to be held somewhat romantically in his arms while he listens against his will.
The definition of romance at its finest, I’m sure.
“I wish you were here.” My fingers leave the metal device that won’t budge and trail down the sharp angle of his jaw. “I wish I’d told you I loved you before it was too late.” My throat hurts when I swallow, and my words shake hard on my next breath. “I hate that I’m in your arms talking about you as if you died that day.” I skim my index finger over his bottom lip. I peer up into those beautiful, familiar eyes and I lift slowly, watching his pupils dilate just slightly before I hesitantly press my lips to his. “I love you, Rime.” I kiss him softly once more, and somewhere during our struggling and my irrational meltdown, I release my magic.
And he kisses me back.
It’s a tentative flick of his tongue along mine that I crave the moment it happens. It’s like a memory flitting through my mind, fleeting before I ever really grasp the details of what I once had. Rime’s holding me, he’s kissing me, he’s here.
His fingers on my thigh dig into the flesh, and he flips me. It’s a flash of movement, and one minute, I’m melting in this man’s arms, and the next he’s pressing his erection against the curve of my ass like a dog. A very…demanding, very sexy, very bad dog.
Fuck.
