He groaned. “I love my name on your lips.” He dipped his head and ran his nose along the column of her neck, breathing in her luscious scent. Thalion felt her shiver under his attentions and grinned. Though she may not want to admit it, he affected her. Her body could not lie.
“I just need your answer,” Cyn said, trying to gain control of her voice.
“I don’t want to answer you,” he muttered against her flesh as his lips skimmed her collarbone. Thalion pulled her hair tighter, forcing her back to arch. “If I answer you, you will leave. I want to keep you.”
“I’m not a pet. You can’t just keep me,” Cyn told him. She put her hand on his chest and pushed, attempting to get him to release her. But somehow, instead of pushing him away, she only wrapped the cloth of his shirt in her hands and pulled him closer.
“Believe me, beautiful, being a pet is not what I want from you.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“You don’t even know me. You’d never laid eyes on me until nine months ago,” she huffed. “How can you possibly think you want me?”
Thalion released her hair, but continued to rest his hands on her neck. He wanted to see her eyes as he spoke. “Tell me you do not feel it,” he challenged. His voice was deep and laced with the passion he felt raging in him. “Tell me this is only one-sided. The minute I saw you, I knew you were made for me. Like a lost key that finally finds its lock, I knew I was finally at home.”
“I,” she began, but Thalion cut her off.
“Don’t lie to me. Speak truth to me, always.”
“I don’t know what I feel,” Cyn answered, her body seeming to deflate.
“Are you with another?” he asked, thinking of the fae standing outside his castle gates.
She held his gaze as she spoke. “No. There is no one.”
“Until now,” he added for her.
“Thalion, this cannot be.”
His frustration at her unwillingness to admit her feelings made him want to shake her … or kiss her. He wasn’t sure which desire would win out. “Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me you don’t want me.” He pressed the issue. When she remained silent, what little control he had left crumbled. “Answer me!”
Chapter 7
“It’s a scary thing to bare one’s soul to another. In some ways, it would be easier to strip naked and bare your flesh instead. The soul is eternal. It lasts forever. But the body is just temporary. One day it will waste away. How much
easier to take the risk of rejection on something that is only temporary than to have one reject your soul for all time.”
~ Cyn
“Answer him dammit!” Peri snarled.
Cyn paused her story as she raised a brow at her commander.
Peri took a breath and brushed off invisible lint from her shirt. “Sorry. Got a little caught up in the moment.”
Alina patted the high fae’s knee. “Don’t feel bad. I yell at the characters in my books.”
“Do they answer you?” Peri asked.
“Not yet.”
“If they start, let me know. I like to keep tabs on those who might one day listen to the voices in their head that tell them to kill me.”
“How do you know the voices are saying to kill you?” Alina asked.
Peri adjusted to a more comfortable position as she spoke. “Well, I don’t know that specifically. But it’s always better to err on the side of a possible assassination. That way I won’t be caught off guard. Surely, by now, I’ve pissed someone off badly enough that they want to kill me.” She looked over to Cyn and gave a quick lift of her chin. “Continue. I need to know what you said. And so help me if this is a cliffhanger—”
