His voice lost its playfulness when he asked, “How so?”
“It makes you feel like something is undone — like that crawling feeling you get when you realize you’ve left the bath running or a candle lit.” Focusing on one particularly robust bunch of plaster grapes, she continued, “It’s a compulsion to be near you, and when I don’t follow through with it, my body fights me. It’s uncomfortable.” She paused, knowing it was a mistake to continue but unable to stop herself. “It’s… it’s painful, in a sense.”
He was quiet for a moment, but she could hear his steady breathing, count each deep inhale and exhale like the ticking of a clock. “Sounds an awful lot like our fever, if you ask me.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” The sound of fabric shifting came again. Was he laying on his side? On his back? She pictured him lounging against his pillows, one arm bent behind his head, showing off every beautiful inch of his chest and stomach.
Camille squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her thighs, trying to will the image away.
“Once we pick a mate, it’s like… Well, it’s like you said. A compulsion. The animal can’t stand to be away from its mate. The body starts to— ah, it’s hard to describe. It’s like everything gets ramped up. Our magic goes haywire. Adrenaline goes overboard. Even our body temperatures rise. We’re arousedconstantly.We get territorial, short-tempered, and go den-crazy. Especially when mates aren’t marked yet.”
“Den-crazy?” She blinked. “Is that like… nesting?”
“A bit. But it’s not like how a newly mated dragon will buy out an entire store’s worth of blankets as soon as they Choose. It’s more like thewholeden. Everything has to be perfect. Usually a shifter will start working on their den years before they even find a mate.”
“Oh. Elves don’t do that.” Camille caught herself before she dared ask whathisden looked like. She gnawed on her lower lip, trying to remind herself that she was a big girl, that she shouldn’t get comfortable with him just because he opened up to her a few hours ago.
Still, curiosity nipped at her heels.
If she gave in to the pull, if she trusted him, would he go den-crazy? She wasn’t sure why the thought made her chest tight, but it did.
Viktor felt none of her hesitation, apparently. His eagerness came through loud and clear when he asked, “What do elves do, then?”
Eyes popping open, she sputtered, “What do you mean?”
“I mean what do elves do when they find their mates, sweetheart?” There was an unmistakable note of rich laughter in his voice. It damn near melted her. “If you don’t make a den and you don’t buy a bunch of blankets, what do you do?” He paused. Voice deepening into a hoarse whisper, he asked, “If I was there with you right now, what would it be like?”
Her breath stuttered. A rush of hot arousal flowed through her veins to settle between her thighs, making her ache more fiercely than she ever had before. Control —reason —slipped from her grasp like so much smoke.
“We don’t bother with a nest or a den,” she answered, knowing he could hear how quickly her breaths came, how raw her voice had become. “We want — need — skin contact above all things. It’s like we’re starved for touch, for the smell and taste of our consorts, and when we get it, we indulge until we’re drunk on it. If… if you were here, we would be in bed, skin to skin, until my scent lived in your pores and vice versa.”
There was a beat of complete silence. Camille had the startling realization that he must have been holding his breath.
Finally, he asked, “Is that all we’d do?”
ChapterEighteen
“No,”she answered. Her free hand dug into her duvet, each claw piercing a perfect little hole in the butter soft cotton. “No, that’s not all.”
“Tell me, sweetheart.”
“I… shouldn’t. It’s a bad idea.”
“But you want to, don’t you?” Viktor’s voice was a stroke to her senses. She swore she could feel it against her skin, caressing her in that rough, proprietary way she associated with him and him alone.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I…”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Yourpullsounds a lot like our fever, right? Iknowthat ache. If this is what you need, then I’m here to help you. Tell me what we’d be doing right now if I was there.”
A streak of pleasure arrowed down her spine in response to that crisp, masculine demand. A completely involuntary whimper escaped. Camille couldn’t tell if her instincts wanted her to claw at him for the audacity or clutch him closer for it.
“Ah, that’s my girl,” he breathed, making the ache worse. “Go on. Tell me what I want to know, and then maybe I can help you take care of that needy cunt.”
Camille flushed, at once shocked and aroused by his crass language, the scorching lust she heard in every word. Shewantedto hate it. It would be better to find it repulsive. That way she could feel something when a man like Cyrus, gentle to his core, touched her or whispered sweet things in her ear.
Instead, she only felt hotter and slick between her thighs. Worse than that was the unwavering compulsion she felt toobey.
