Maybe it was nothing more than attraction. Maybe the pull between us was just some physical spark, a hunger demanding to be burned out. Maybe it wasn’t as deep as I was feeling. It was merely an experience, one that a human like me was lucky to come across. Everything would fade with my time out of here.
The ache in my chest twisted, and I pressed my palm over my heart, trying to soothe it. Thrax’s gaze followed the movement. Heat rushed through me as I remembered the gown clinging wetly to my skin, my breasts pressing against the thin cloth, nipples hard under the cold rain. I was literally bare to his eyes.
He looked away, but only to fix those eyes back on mine, then drop them to my mouth when I bit down on my lip, his stare darkening, burning through me as if he could taste the flesh I was torturing.
Breathing unevenly under the weight of his stare, I admitted, “You drive me insane.”
His hand slid from my cheek to the nape of my neck. “Then put on your seatbelt.” He fisted his hand in my hair. “Because I’m about to be so much worse.”
One heartbeat. One stare.
Then he yanked me forward, his other arm locking around my waist. He bent, lips crashing down on mine so hard I would have lost balance if he wasn’t caging me to himself.
The kiss was brutal and sloppy, a bruising clash of lips and teeth that tasted of rain and ruin. His tongue parted my lips, devouring me like he’d been starved, like I was the first breath he’d taken in centuries. His hand fisted in my hair, pulling me deeper, closer, into the very centre of him. My fingers curled into his soaked shirt, clutching and anchoring myself against the wildness he unleashed inside me. The only thing I knew at that moment was the heat of him, the scrape of his teeth, and the dizzying way he stole every breath from me.
Thunder cracked overhead as the sky roared its disapproval at our union, lightning flaring so bright I saw him in blinding fragments behind my closed eyes. The storm might have raged to tear us apart, but he only dragged me closer, as though even the sky couldn’t stop him, like the world could end and he’d die satisfied with my lips still on his.
When he finally pulled back, I gasped, chest heaving, my lips swollen, my body trembling against the warmth of his. He looked down at me like I was some treasure he found and would chain to himself forever.
He smoothed a hand over my soaked hair, brushing it back. “You’re freezing. Let’s go in.”
Before I could nod, his arms swept me up, lifting me against his chest. He carried me through the shattered doorway, up the stairs, and set me gently in the bathroom.
Later, after bathing, I drank the sleeping tea waiting by my bedside. I tried to sleep, staring out the window, but my mind wouldn’t settle. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard a child crying. And worse, I couldn’t stop thinking of the kiss and everything Thrax had said in the rain. I also couldn’t stop thinking of the broken door. Anyone or anything could come in.
Giving up, I slipped out of bed, walking quietly through the hall until I reached his room. I knocked once before pushing the door open.
He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, head resting against his fist. The sight made my heart lurch. It was as if he’d been waiting for me.
He tapped the empty space beside him.
I didn’t think. I just closed the door and hurried to the bed, nerves buzzing, happiness cutting through like light as I slid beneath the covers, facing him. He wore a simple black long-sleeved shirt, and his scent from his sheet and body wrapped around me, heady and consuming. His hand rose, brushing my hair gently from my face.
“Where were you today?” I whispered, though I knew he wouldn’t answer. “You always sneak out when I sleep.”
“Sleep,” he said simply, his voice equally quiet. “I’m not going anywhere.”
That ‘sleep’ could have also been a spell. Because the word reached into me and switched my brain off. With his touch stroking my hair and his scent flooding my senses, the tea he made me pulled me under.
CHAPTER THIRTY
SANORA
The sound of a drill clawed into my head, dragging me out of sleep. It grew louder the more awake I became, rattling through my skull until I groaned and pried open my heavy eyes.
For a second, I forgot where I was. Then it hit me that I was in Thrax’s room, recalling how I’d skidded to his bed, desperate for the strange safety that only he seemed to bring. My hand fell to the mattress beside me to find it cold and empty of him.
When had he left? Did he even sleep here at all?
The drilling continued, drilling into my mood now. I shoved myself up and stumbled to the door, stepping out to the stairwell. From the landing, I saw a man crouched by the doorway downstairs, dropping his drill and picking up a hammer, a blue vest hugging his frame. He was fixing the door.
Had Thrax called him?
I turned away, went to the bathroom for a little business, then padded downstairs. The repairman was older, sixties maybe, with a white beard, and his tools spread out by his boots. A new door leaned against the frame, the broken one was gone. He looked up when my footsteps creaked down the stairs. His eyes widened, surprise freezing him for a second before his lips moved.
“Oh, I didn’t know anyone was inside.”
“Good morning,” I muttered.
