“Where do I please you, Princess?” he whispered, and gods, I remembered. I remembered him asking that question before, remembered the smirk on his lips, the challenge in his storm-gray eyes. Back when we were still pretending we didn’t want this. Back when the idea of touching him felt like treason against everything I’d been raised to accomplish.
Now his fingers curled inside me, and I answered with a sound I didn’t recognize as my own.
“Here,” he breathed. “Right here. Isn’t it?”
I panted, on the brink of coming apart in his arms.
His thumb pressed harder, circling with devastating precision while his fingers maintained that perfect rhythm. The shadows around us seemed to pulse with his heartbeat—or maybe mine. I couldn’t tell anymore where I ended and he began.
“Come for me, Furious,” he said, and it wasn’t a request. It was a command. A royal decree from the heir to a throne who had chosen to kneel at mine.
I broke.
The release crashed through me like a wave, like wildfire, like the first rays of dawn splitting open a dark horizon. My body bowed off his chest, muscles seizing, every nerve ending igniting at once. I heard myself cry out—his name, maybe, or something wordless—and his shadows swallowed the sound whole, kept it just for us in this sanctuary he’d built from darkness and want.
His arms wrapped around me as I trembled through the aftershocks, one hand still pressed between my thighs, gentling me down. His lips found the curve of my neck, pressing soft kisses there while I remembered how to breathe.
“Beautiful,” he murmured against my skin. “Absolutely beautiful.”
I laughed weakly, still trembling. “I don't think I can move.”
“Then don’t.” He turned me in his arms until I was facing him, straddling his lap in the cooling water. His gray eyes were molten in the candlelight, his dark hair curling damply at his temples. “I’ll move you where I want you.”
The promise in those words sent a fresh shiver down myspine. I reached up to brush back his damp hair, my heart already racing again as his erection pressed into my core. His eyes lit with that same awareness, but he didn’t hurry to do anything about it.
Instead, he caught my wrist, bringing my palm to his lips. The tattoos that wound up his forearms seemed to shift in the flickering light—ancient runes of power and protection, a history written in ink. I traced one with my finger, following it up to his bicep, across the hard swell of muscle.
He was beautiful too.
All sharp angles and lethal grace, built like a weapon meant for war and somehow still gentle enough to wash my hair and knead the knots from my shoulders. The contradiction made something ache in my chest.
“Bed,” I said, finding my voice again. “You promised me a bed.”
His smile turned wicked. “Impatient.”
“You made me impatient.” I leaned in, brushing my lips against his jaw. “You made me a lot of things.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“Terrible things,” I corrected. “Distracted during meetings with Spring emissaries. Pretending your touch was merely to help steady me as we cut through a thicket. Prone to staring at your shoulders when you were changing out of your leathers. These last few days have been torture.”
“That was on purpose,” he admitted.
“I know.” I kissed the corner of his mouth. “I hated you for it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
No. I didn't.
He stood in one fluid motion, lifting me like I weighed nothing. Water cascaded off us both, steam curling in the air, and I wrapped my legs around his waist on instinct. The hardlength of him pressed against my center, and we both went still, breath catching.
“Bed,” he agreed, voice strained.
He stepped out of the tub, shadows parting for him like loyal subjects, and carried me through the doorway into the adjoining bedroom. He laid me down like I was something fragile. Like I might break. Then he knelt at the edge of the bed, dark hair falling across his forehead in wild disarray. His hands found my ankles, thumbs tracing slow circles.
“What are you doing?” I asked, impatient and aching.
His grin was knowing. “I’m taking my time.” His grip slid higher. Calves. Knees. The soft skin of my inner thighs. His shadows followed, trailing over my skin like phantom caresses, raising goosebumps everywhere they touched.
