“Please? Just for a moment.”
He exhaled, nostrils flared. Pupils blown out. Allowing the ring to slide off his finger for the second time before the sun had risen to its full height. Swinging from my index finger, the Glaith lost its power over us.
With no warning, awareness of him exploded behind my eyes, ki searing everything it touched.
Back arched, a scream died in my throat as I tried to deal with the surge. Tried to cope with my skin touching his, and nothing between us. Every muscle tight with effort, blind to everything but the ki ravaging me from within.
He was hiding an impossible secret—I knew it the moment he faltered, echoing my shock, lips parting on a silent gasp. I knew it even before his nostrils flared, eyes wide. I knew it before his ki-sense whirled through my system and the link between us took root, twitching with a living power all its own.
I knew it, because Ifelthim.
Blood to Blood.
A young man in the prime of his life. Powerful. Elite. Raw and savage, yet braced by an iron fist of control I simply did not possess. Blood surged through his veins as his ki whipped through me. Touching, learning me in the same way I now knew him.
“What—” He cursed, strong fingers flexing, crushing me to his chest. “Whatareyou?”
My knees wobbled, but I didn’t give voice to the answer he already knew. Head spinning with molten waves of stone and wind, reducing me to a gasping, wide-eyed fool.
Too much! Goddess, it was too much!
I couldn’t contain this! I needed—
I reached for my Glaith and came up short, fingernails scraping my breastbone, desperate for somewhere to dump the excess before I forgot why I should care. Needing something to distract from this impossible Caledonian Elite. And when I could not speak, lost as I was, he pulled me closer.
Impossibly strong, inside and out.
“What are you?”
I bared my teeth, refusing to be outdone. “You’re…” I swallowed the sopping wet ashes powdering the back of my tongue, unsure if they existed outside of my overwrought brain or not. “You’re Elite. Such power—it’s reserved for the Goddess’ chosen few…” A tremor rippled through me… his eyes… so dark. Begging me to tip forward. To fall into their depths and drink from the Void itself. “You shouldn’t…” Lifting trembling hand, I traced the stubble on his chin with my forefinger, gasping at the ki that sparkled between us. “Impossible.”
A low groan rumbled in his throat, and he swallowed, catching my wrist in a much larger hand. For a long moment, he simply stared down at me, but when my tongue darted out to wet lips dried by searing winds of ki and living shadows, something in him snapped. I felt it happen. Even before he pressed his lips to mine, I felt it.
Warm and soft, his kiss spoke of the forbidden. The impossible. Making my core clench with unnatural speed and fervor as ki whirled between us. Sending blood surging in delicate tissue. All around us. Invisible to the hoards of sightless mundane going about their business a scant few feet away, where only their shades could see us. The scrape of a day-old beard dragged a splintered groan from my chest, and, hands slipping down my back, he seized the taut globes of my bottom. Spreading me.
Pulling me closer.
Would that he could drag me inside his skin, where I could drink him dry and soothe this blessed, painful ache.
His teeth traced my lower lip, filling my lungs with breath and heated ki, pressing a thick bulge against my belly.
I gasped, drinking him in, demanding more. Gorging until my every cell was filled to bursting. Drawing on him as heavily as I drew upon his lips.Needingit. More. There would never be enough.
A puff of breath warmed my cheek when he twisted, breaking away from my lips with a curse, his fingers bunching the fabric of my shift. Inching it indecently high. But he drew back, setting his forehead against mine. Petting my hair back with calloused hands. Obsidian eyes concealed behind scrunched eyelids, labored breath leaving my skin damp. “God, the taste of you, girl.” He released my bottom and cupped the back of my neck, forcing me to still. “What are you?”
“I’m—” my voice cracked, and I cleared my throat, blinking as the world settled around us. Dazed, I squinted up at the man, admiring the rugged, handsome features so different to my own. Alien. Bronzed skin, muscular frame, dark hair and darker eyes—everything I wasn’t.
ACaledonian.
Kissing a Caledonian Elite in public? Had I lost my damned mind? My father would…
Nothing.
My father wasn’t here. And I hadn’t had enough. Not now. Not ever.
I buried my fist in his hair, pulling him back. Driven by instinct I didn’t recognize as my own. By a needy itch below the skin, the likes of which I’d never felt before. Beforehim.
“Wait—” he gasped against my lips, capturing my wrist. And then, marshaling every last drop of willpowereitherof us possessed, he folded my fingers about his ring. Pressing his Glaith into the palm of my hand.
