The Minder may as well have skimmed her fingertips across his thigh, for how much the very thought of herburned.
How much it made him sizzle from the inside out.
Like fire against ice.
He didn’t answer, didn’t wrap his fingertips around the stone, because hearing her voicenow,after he’d seen her in the bathing chambers? After he saw the way the sweat licked her skin, how her hair looked when it was wet and glimmering? After he’d bared himself to her, body and soul?
He’d told her about Soraya.
Gods.
Why had he told herthat?
He’d never forget the feel of her eyes on him.
He’d never forget the wanting that had surged through him, a shock to his system.
A truth he could not ignore.
She wasoff-limits,not chosen by the Gods for him.
Forbidden.
He hadn’t been back to those bathing chambers since. He’d bathed in the servants’ instead, with ice cold water. With a constant prayer on his lips, so that his thoughts didn’t drift.
The stone heated even more, as if she were nudging him. Refusing to let her fingers uncurl from her own, wherever she was.
Save me from her, Vivorr,he sent up the prayer like a desperate breath, for the stone was like a poison in his pocket. A drug Arawnwanted to keep coming back to, if only so he could be swept away by the rush that flooded him when she was near.
He hardly heard the voices around him now, as the War Table continued.
As Arawn thought of Ezer, naked in that damned pool behind him...
And the stone in his cloak pocket warmed and warmed and warmed.
Don’t touch it,he told himself.Let it go cold. Let space grow between you, because she’ll fly away from here soon enough, and the gods only know what will become of her then.
And what will become of you, if you keep letting her in.
He couldn’t go back to that brokenness again.
He shifted, his fingertips sliding towards the stone of their own accord, as if he were powerless to the pull of her.
Then his mind slid to thoughts of her last night.
Beneath him in the training room, his body atop hers.
The room was suddenly far too warm.
He closed his eyes, but there she was again, kissing his conscience.
He saw her flat on her back and ripe for the taking, sweat beading across her stubborn brow, and that ever-glorious rage in her eyes as she glared up at him and dared him to defy her.
And gods, he wanted to.
Time and again.
“You challenge me, Minder,”he’d thought to her through the stone.
