But I don’t shy away. “Why am I so drawn to you?”
Even now, I want to run my hand over those muscles in his back. To know how they feel beneath my touch.Is this how he felt, when touching my wings?
Callan stops what he’s doing, his hands hovering over the pot. “In what way?”
In every way.
My body has shifted, from ice cold to far too hot. I inhale sharply when he moves, twisting, and his hands wrap around mine. “Don’t.”
I look down, to where my nails meet the skin of my wrist. Callan’s thumb nudges them away, stroking the skin.
“Don’t,” he says again. Almost pleading. The breath almost leaves my body when he lifts my wrist, twisting it. Callan presses his lips to my scarred skin, searing like a brand. As though he’s marking me, indelibly and permanently.
My eyes travel over his face. Learning him. It seems as if every time I look at this male, I see something new. My gaze catches on the vertical, thin white scar that bisects both his upper and lower lip. I reach for it, tracing it with my fingers, and my throat tightens at his breath against them. “How did this happen?”
He turns his face further into my touch. Both of us speak quietly, as if anything louder might shatter whatever this is. “My father did it with his ring, when I refused the Boreasan throne he offered me.”
Our gazes lock. “He offered you the throne? Over Petyr?”
I had thought they were half-siblings. Callan swallows. “I was his wife’s son, but the truth was more or less not spoken of. As far as many were concerned, I was his son too. But I had maegis.Strongmaegis, and not unlike his. When Petyr did not emerge as Caelumnai, he was beyond reckoning. The offer was made, and rejected, and Petyr remained the heir. We never spoke of it again.”
I think of Petyr. “Do you regret it?”
“Often.” My fingers still stroke the puckered skin. His lips shift beneath my touch. “But also never. I never wanted power.”
My voice barely makes it from my throat. “What do you want?”
His rough murmur speaks to something in my stomach, something that twists and flips like a heavy rock and yet impossibly light at the same time. “You know what I want.”
Friends.
That is what he said. That was the game.
Except this no longer feels like a game to me. And I wonder if perhaps Callan has been playing a different game this entire time, simply waiting quietly for me to catch up.
His eyes close, as though he’s in pain as my fingers travel over his lips, tracing them. And he breathes in, a shocked inhale, as I lean forward and press my lips to that scar, in the same way he did to mine.
As soon as my lips touch his skin, I know I have made a mistake. A grave mistake. One I can’t take back.
Because it is notenough.
Callan’s low groan has the rock in my stomach melting. It turns molten, hot and fluid andeverywhere.His arm bands around my lower back, pulling me into him as strong fingers slide into my braided hair and rough words spill from his tongue.
“I don’t want to be your friend, Selene.”
His lips find mine.
We collide in a sudden, desperate need, the shocked noise in my throat swallowed by the sheer sensation that overwhelms me with his lips against mine. At our bodies, pressed together. Callan’s hand grips my neck lightly, holding me against him as he pulls me closer still. Our chests press together, our breathing mingled as I push back into him, losing myself in his taste.
My hands sweep up. They bury in his hair, gripping, my breath gasping from my lungs as he pulls back only to press his lips to the edge of my mouth. To my cheek, the side of my neck. The barest brush of teeth against the sensitive skin tears a cry from my throat, and he takes that too, pulling my face back to his and devouring me again.
We chase each other’s lips. Each of us follows the other as if we’re dancing. The inside of my thighs squeeze his as he holds me on top of him, my body shifting in restless, aching need.
I did not know—
I did notknow. That it could be like this.
That he would be like this. Fire, heat, and desperation. Now that I’ve found it, I am unbalanced. As if the world I knew has shifted, because now I knowthis.My hands tighten on him even as he lifts us, placing me down gently on those jewelled pillows and following me.
