I couldn’t think, couldn’t form words with his body against mine. My hands slid beneath his shirt, fingertips tracing the hard planes of his abdomen. His muscles jumped beneath my touch. Varyth hissed, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment.
When he opened them again, they were dark, hungry. “Answer me, Isara,” he demanded.
“Yes,” I whispered, “I understand.”
His lips trailed down my throat again, teeth grazing my collarbone, and I gasped, my head falling back against the wall. “Gods, Varyth.”
But the second I said his name the guilt lashed through me.
Navaire.
No. Not now. Not now.
I wanted Varyth. Gods, I wanted him with a ferocity that terrified me, wanted his mouth on mine, his hands mapping every inch of my skin, wanted to lose myself in the heat and hunger of him until there was nothing left but us. I wanted to stay in this moment, to let it consume me, to let him brand himself into my bones.
But my body betrayed me. Froze like a creature caught in a snare, every nerve screaming two different commands—pull him closer and run.
Varyth felt it instantly. The shift. The fracture.
His hands stilled on my body, his mouth going motionless against my throat. For a single, suspended heartbeat, neither of us moved. I could feel his breath against my skin, ragged and hot, could feel the tension coiling through him like a drawn bowstring.
Then he pulled back.
The loss of him was physical, a tearing sensation that made my chest constrict. His eyes met mine, and what I saw there made something in me crack wide open.
Hurt. Raw and unguarded and devastating.
“Varyth—” His name tore from my throat, desperate, pleading.
But he was already stepping away, already putting distance between us. His hands fell from my body, and the absence of his touch felt like frostbite, like something vital being ripped away.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was hollow, scraped clean of everything that had filled it moments before. “I shouldn’t have?—”
“No, wait—” I reached for him, my hand grasping at air as he moved further back. “That’s not?—”
“It’s fine, Isara.” The words were clipped, controlled. The fortress walls slamming back into place, brick by brutal brick. “I misread the situation.”
“You didn’t?—”
“I did.” He wouldn’t look at me anymore, his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder, his jaw a rigid line. “And I apologise.”
The formality of it gutted me. This was Varyth the High Lord, not the man who’d just been kissing me like I was oxygen andhe was drowning. Not the man whose hands had trembled in my hair, whose voice had broken saying my name.
“Varyth, please—” My voice cracked, and I hated how small it sounded, how desperate.
But he was already turning toward the door, his movements mechanical, empty. Varyth opened the door.
“Wait—” The word came out strangled, breaking in half.
He paused in the doorway, his back to me, shoulders drawn tight. For a moment I thought he might turn around, might let me explain, might let me close the distance between us and fix whatever I’d just shattered.
But then his hand tightened on the door frame, knuckles going white.
“Goodnight, Isara.”
And he walked out.
“Fuck.”
