Once the guards exited, Selene made her descent from the dais. She moved with fluid grace, her steps confident as she slowly approached Darion.
He didn’t know what she intended. With her moving in so close to him, his grasp on strategy and negotiations was usurped by the undeniable flood of awareness and attraction that swamped him as she drew to a pause in front of him.
He’d been wrong about her beauty. Nothing about her was cold, not even her startling blue eyes. She was searing in her loveliness. Creamy skin and silken hair that wasn’t merely platinum but shot with the finest gossamer strands of silver, gold, and copper.
Her tall, leanly curved body radiated undeniable heat, even if it seemed to be primarily in anger toward him. And her scent, an intoxicating combination of sea, sand, and sky, made his thoughts scramble and his veins go taut with desire.
Not even the bonds that might choke the life out of him at any moment were enough to curb the arousal that flared through him like quicksilver as he drank in every inch of Selene’s extraordinary face. His fangs throbbed in his gums, stoking a hunger that rose as swiftly as the rest of his unwelcome responses to her.
He cleared his throat, trying to wrestle his wits back. “Why didn’t you take the colony’s crystal when you had the chance? As I understand, they’ve lived in fear of you discovering their location and destroying them by taking their crystal, but you left it. Why?”
She drew in a breath, her fine brows rankling slightly. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. Certainly not you.”
But Darion caught the spark of something soft in her gaze. Perhaps this close she couldn’t hide it. At least, not from him.
“You chose to leave the crystal with them, even though they stole it from you when they fled the realm all those centuries ago. You’ve chosen to leave the crystal with them this whole time, haven’t you?”
An agitated, cornered look swept over her. Christ, she almost looked afraid. Terrified of being discovered.
“Do not mistake my benevolence toward my people for weakness,” she all but hissed in his face. “And don’t think I will have any where you’re concerned, Darion Thorne.”
He saw her crystalline blue gaze narrow with contempt before a blast of white light slammed into him.
Then everything went dark.
CHAPTER 19
Selene stared down at the immense Breed warrior lying unconscious at her feet.
She was trembling inside, her heartbeat racing.
She told herself it was outrage. That the lightheadedness she felt, the difficulty catching her breath, was due to the depth of her fury. She would have willingly blamed the strange sensation on the fact that she had spent too much of herself the past few hours--first, in leaving the realm to find Jordana, and now, having wielded her light against Darion Thorne.
Those things had taxed her, but the truth was something far more alarming.
Hehad done this to her.
The handsome, dark-haired Breed male with the sharp mind and reckless tongue. The Order warrior who had dared to walk into her court on a lie, even when he had to know the brash move might cost him his life.
As queen, she had every right to end him here and now.
As a woman, she couldn’t deny that every particle of her being stirred with unwanted awareness the instant he’d stepped into the room, a broad wall of hard muscle and menace, garbed from head to toe in black and armed with his crude weapons of war. Bold. Unflinching. Radiating undeniable strength, even after she’d wrapped him in her bonds of light.
Darion Thorne was arrogant and fearlessly defiant, a clear threat to her and every citizen in her realm, yet she couldn’t help but be intrigued by his uncommon courage.
Neither of their previous confrontations had prepared her for facing him in person. To say he was attractive was pitifully inadequate. His intelligent brown eyes were closed now, shuttered by thick dark lashes that fell against lean, angled cheeks that tapered to a strong, stubborn jaw shadowed with black whiskers. He was a big male, broad-shouldered and covered in muscle, from his powerful arms to his long legs.
Everything about him spoke of darkness when she inhabited a world of light. His mere presence in the realm should have been an affront to her senses.
But that wasn’t what she felt when she’d watched him from the dais. How she wished she could claim it had been.
Even now, she shook with a reaction that had little to do with anger or offense.
Scowling at his unmoving bulk, she stepped around him and gestured to the captain of her palace guard who waited outside. “Yurec, take him to the east tower.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Selene didn’t wait to see her men collect Darion and remove him. She needed a moment of solitude, a chance to catch her breath, which was still racing in time with her galloping pulse.
