Adriana pulled back from him slightly, her brow creased in confusion as she shook her head. He wasn’t sure why he’d said them out loud, but he felt as though the words needed to be spoken rather than pushed into her mind. He wanted her to know how beautiful she was, wanted everyone around them to know just how beautiful he found her to be.
Each time he had visited during her lessons with Striga, he had sensed the overwhelming despair from her before he’d even arrived. The shame of not being in control of her powers, the guilt of feeling responsible for so much. Most of all, he’d felt the hatred she held towards her skills, her choices, her body. It was unbearable. The only thing that seemed stronger than her own discontent with herself, was her irritation for Xander.
He had been happy to fulfil her needs, to become someone to hate just to make sure that spark inside of her never died, but he didn’t want to fight with her right now. He didn’t want to argue or pretend to despise her, he wanted to give her something real. Something truthful.
“Then please accept my apology for being a fool and not telling you sooner, that you put shame to the brightest of stars.”
Adriana gasped quietly, her usual pale cheeks instantly blushing a deep red that almost matched her painted lips. Xander was not a poet, nor a particularly romantic person, but he knew calling her beautiful wasn’t enough, and so he had simply spoken his truth.
As his fingers began to twitch with nerves and his breaths became ragged, he realised she controlled his very existence. If she told him to stop breathing, he’d stop. If she asked him to walk through fire, he’d already be feeling the heat. If she wanted him to abandon everything he knew, he’d pack his bags without a second thought. There was no request too great, no sacrifice too profound. It was all hers to command, and the thought terrified him.
The idea of not being in control of his own life was unsettling to say the least. Every single muscle tensed beneath his suit, and he knew she could feel exactly how much he wanted her as they continued to press closer together as they danced. But as he felt the heat from her body rise an unnatural amount, he realised he was not the only one feeling out of control.
He sensed her emotions first, the desire emanating from her running wild. The candles that lined the walls began to burn brighter as the warmth from her body grew and grew. The winter wind outside the manor became so strong that it wailed through the air, loud enough for the staff by the door to hear. She was losing control, and fast.
The song came to an end, and while the other couples bowed and curtsied at one another, Xander pulled her through the closest door and out into the empty gardens towards the lake.
“You need to stop,” he said firmly, as he brought her onto the decking. He waved off the staff that had followed and seeped his magic into their minds to convince them to return to the ball, away from the storm that had begun to brew. Once the gardens had cleared, he let go of her hand and backed away, taking a few steps to distance himself from her. “You need to sort this out, Adriana. People will see!”
Adriana fanned her face with her hand, clearly desperate to relieve some of the heat she still felt, the heat that Xander could still feel inside himself. Her face scrunched as she tried toconcentrate, tried to take back control of her powers from her emotions, but Xander realised that she couldn’t. Her head was so lost, just as his was, and she had no hope.
“For goodness sake, this is ridiculous!” he scolded, hoping his usual tactics of irritating her would work. “Were you really affected so much from just dancing with me?”
“Oh, should I point out that you were also so very obviously affected?” she threw back, gesturing down to the still present bulge in the front of his trousers.
Xander’s jaw tensed, his eyes narrowing at her as he struggled to subdue the urges inside of him to reach for her, grab her, touch her. There were all sorts of things he wanted to do to her, so many depraved, devastating things. Whether it was lust or something more, the pull between them had never felt so strong as it did in this moment.
“Very mature,” he spoke through gritted teeth. “At least I am not the one lighting up a whole ballroom! A ballroom full of people who are aware and mostly terrified of the tales of Daemons, might I add.”
Adriana screamed in anger, throwing her hands in the air. With her movements, the lake began to rise up and overflow onto the decking.
“Stop getting angry with me! Your anger only makes me angrier, your presence makes me angrier, the way you make me feel makes me furious. I hate you!”
“You hate me?” he laughed, donning the pompous persona he knew she was so used to seeing from him. “You did not seem to hate me saving you in there. You did not seem to hate my hands on you.”
At his mocking tone, she lost it. A burst of water shot up from the middle of the lake, the wind howled louder and louder, the ground itself began to tremble. And the air…
The air hummed with the unmistakable sounds of electricity. Xander’s arrogant smirk was wiped from his face.
He had seen Striga lose her temper on many occasions, had been on the receiving end of her tantrums that led to her setting many things on fire. But this, this was different. Adriana wasn’t directing anything at him or even herself. Her anger, her frustration, her desire—she was taking it all out on the world.
“Yes, I hate you, Alexander Duran!” she yelled.
Her eyes seemed to light up with the same lightning that danced around her fingertips. Xander called her name, begged her to calm down, but she didn’t listen. Even he couldn’t hear his own voice over the roar of her magic.
“I hate everything about you! Your cocky confidence, your sarcastic smile, your voice that you clearly love the sound of. I hate you, I hate the way you make me feel!”
She obviously hadn’t noticed he had been speaking to her, calling her name as she’d listed off all the ways she despised him, nor had she noticed he had closed the distance between them. Until his lips came crashing down on hers, silencing her fury.
He kissed her with everything he’d ever felt and was yet to feel. He kissed her with his anger, his pain, his sadness. He kissed her with his lust, his craving, his passion, his power. And he knew she could taste it all.
His hands gripped the sides of her face as his fingers entangled into her hair that had fallen out of its updo. She didn’t move, didn’t kiss him back, and as Xander pulled away, his heart ceased to beat when he realised what he’d done.
Her skin seemed to burn through the leather of his gloves, but he felt unable to let go. If she wanted to kill him for touching her without permission, he’d gladly accept his fate. But then, as the heat within her body rose again, he realised her powers had begun to dull, and seemed to fuel something else entirely as she reached for his collar and pulled him back to her lips.
She fisted her hands in his dark hair, pulling at the curly strands in a deliciously painful way as she pushed her body up into his. He held her waist in a harsh grip with one hand while the other reached down her back, drifting lower until he cupped her backside, pushing her further into his hardness. It was not all too dissimilar from the way that man had touched her before, and Xander knew it was his own possessive way of ridding Adriana of the memory of that man’s disgusting hands and replacing them with his own.
No one would touch her like that again, he decided. No one. He didn’t understand it, wasn’t sure that he wanted to, but through all the mess of lust and power and desire and craving, he knew one thing to be true. Adriana was his. Undoubtedly. Whether she knew it or not.
