“And I you.” My voice came out breathless, but that could only be to my advantage. Let him think me prey already caught.
I stood on my tiptoes and lifted my arms, curling them around his neck. I tilted my face toward his, drew him down to me, and kissed him. Fiercely. Hungrily. I dragged my teeth over his lips. I skimmed my hands down the front of his light tunic, trailing my fingertips over the ridges of hard muscles as I searched for more weapons hidden beneath his clothes.
He pulled me flush against him, my hips against his hips. Traitorous heat sparkled through me, like summer sun on rustling green leaves. I inhaled and reached for his belt, gripping the leather with my clammy fingers and preparing to push it through the silver buckle.
Irian lifted his mouth from mine. With a perilous, meticulous kind of self-control, he pushed me away.
“What are you doing?” His eyes simmered with desire, and his mouth was bruised by my vigorous kisses. But some intuition or insight swept across his expression, and his gaze sharpened on my face. “Something is wrong. You are shaking.”
Shite.I clenched my fists, cursing him for his predator’s instinct. It didn’t help that I was out of practice at this kind of thing.
You were never very skilled at seduction in the first place, little witch.A cruel little voice that sounded a lot like Cathair whispered inside me.Remember Connla?
But it was too late to doubt myself now.
“I’m—” I stepped closer to him. I slid one of my hands—which were, indeed, shaking like leaves—up the front of his tunic. I lifted my eyes toward his face, making them wide and lambent. “I’m a little nervous.”
He held himself stock-still. “Why?”
Again, I stood on my tiptoes. The top of my head barely cleared his shoulders. I tilted my chin, the skin of my cheek against the faint rasp of his jaw, and whispered into his ear.
“We started something last month.” I brushed my lips against his neck. He shuddered. “I intend to finish it.”
Irian’s hands trailed up my arms, sweeping over my collarbones to cup my chin. The pupils of his eyes were blown dark with desire, obscuring the silver irises. Even so, his gaze raked my face, searching my expression for—what? I didn’t know.
Whatever it was, he must have found it. Because he gathered me into his arms.
Space bent, churned, collapsed.
I fell to my knees on cool flagstones. For once, I didn’t feel like I was going to hurl my dinner. Probably because I already felt nauseated about what I was doing.
No. I was made of sharp metal and dark deeds and black magic. I was made forthis.
Irian’s hand rested in the small of my back as he guided me to my feet. We had returned to his room—the tower room at the top of the dún. The same room Rogan had chosen for himself, in another world. A burst of vertigo made me dizzy, and I stumbled against Irian. He steadied me, then cupped my cheeks between his hot palms.
“Colleen.” His voice was rough with want. “You are everything I never knew to hope for. I didn’t think I had anywhere left to fall. And yet—I’ve already fallen.”
For a moment, my resolve left me, and I was nothing but the lost changeling girl who’d waited all her life to be chosen. To be loved.
My eyes trembled shut. I fought for clarity, for purpose.
My senses came flooding back. My stomach churned. How dare he try to manipulate me with those words? And so easily. An icy, unsettling fervor settled over me, patching the shards of my resolve. I welcomed the coldness. It chased away the uneasy heat pulsing through my core and making my limbs weak. It reminded me who I was—and who I wasn’t.
I silenced Irian with a searing kiss, fumbling for the fastenings down the front of his tunic, then simply ripping the fabric. The cloth tore, sending buttons bouncing into the corners and exposing his tattooed torso. His breath hitched as I reached out to touch him, his perfect expanse of musculature flexing beneath my hands. He let me trail my fingers down to the line of soft hair rising above the waist of his breeches before he caught my hand in his.
“Why the rush?”
“Why wait?” I purred, reaching out with my free hand to press against the front of his trousers. “Last time, I let my thoughts get in the way. Tonight, I mean only to act.”
Beneath my stroking fingers, his arousal strained against the fabric. He leaned into my touch, resting his forehead against mine as he buried his hands in my hair. I nudged him two steps backward. His calves struck the edge of his low bed, and he abruptly sat. I pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him. My gown sighed around us as I pinned him with my thighs. I raked my hands up his chest and bent to kiss his neck. He inhaled as his eyes fluttered closed.
I hesitated. His easy surrender to my advances was disarming. Briefly, I regretted that I could not abandon myself to this moment in the same way.
Swallowing my guilt, I struck.
There wasn’t much for me to work with up here in this tower of pale stone. But I had anticipated that. His bedsheets were linen, and within seconds they disintegrated into the flax they’d been woven from. Long, fibrous stalks whipped around Irian’s arms and tangled in his hair, sprouting tiny lavender flowers. My gown of gold and black—crafted from the magic of the forest below for this purpose—fell apart around me. Tough, thorny gorse grew swiftly over Irian’s legs, pinning him down. Purple aster twined between his fingers, cuffing them to one another. Dark moss anchored everything else to the suddenly rotting mattress below. Within moments, Irian was entombed in greenery and flowers, and I wasin my underclothes, crouched atop him with one of my skeans flush against his throat. The other was pointed below his belt.
Instead of fighting against his floral prison, Irian froze. Emotion winged across his face and beat his shadows into stiff, stark blots of darkness on the bed behind him. I recognized shock, followed swiftly by rage. But instead of descending toward all-consuming violence, his expression settled into…hurt. Surprise rustled to life inside me, and I fought the urge to look away from his uncanny stare. He tilted his jaw against my knife, daring me to cut him.
