“No.” It sounded more like a grunt than a word.
So hedidhave a mate? Was it someone she knew from before? She went through the list of Xaal she’d become familiar with but couldn’t imagine any of them being a match for him. Then again, how would she know? “Well”—her teeth clacked together too loudly—“that’s not very honest of you. If I was your mate, I’d—”
“You are so nevskoln stubborn,” Kedar growled. Without warning, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her back on top of him. An embarrassing squeak left her as part of the blanket covering them flared up and let in the cold air.
“I don’t want to be on top of you,” she said, but the words held no conviction. He was so gods damn warm. Curled uncomfortably on his chest, she refused to move, but then hisrough hands were on her thighs, guiding them over his torso with a gentle assertiveness that surprised her.
She ended up settled where she was before. Except now, Kedar was touching her, rubbing her legs up and down, stopping right at the juncture where her ample ass met her thighs. Heat bloomed wherever his palms touched. Every pass of his calloused hands stirred something inside of her.
Gods damn it all.
“This is better for you,” he said.
There was no question about it. He knew what she needed and was giving it to her. Shehatedhim for it. It was easier to keep the past at bay when he was being an ass and using that cold, unaffected tone.
“All this just so you can try and kill me.”
He grunted but didn’t respond.
Without the distraction of battling verbally, Vessa was forced to focus on his touch. She should tell him to stop, but part of her didn’t want to. She tried to tell herself that it was because he was warming her up. But the thing that had been waking inside her since she’d been confronted with him again came clawing out of its dark hole.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been touched.
And it felt so damn good. Had she ever been held like this? Handled like she was a precious thing in need of care?
But she knew the answer. Beyond fighting, she hadn’t been touched in any intimate way since meeting Kedar. Why did it have to be him who made her aware of just how starved she was for such simple affection? It was like she’d been without water all this time and just now felt the cumulative thirst of all those years.
Heat pooled in her core. Some carnal creature overtook her senses. She yearned to move, to create friction.Burn. Her lipsparted on a silent gasp as his touch became firmer, his fingers sinking into her thighs more with each pass.
She ached. She craved. Gods, if she just moved…
Her traitorous hips shifted the barest amount. She swore his breath hitched, and his fingers came closer to where she needed to be touched by him the most.
Fuck!
“Don’t touch me,” she finally, belatedly, snapped. Her breathy voice betrayed her. “I may need you for warmth, but I don’t need your fucking hands pawing at me.”
His hands were off her in an instant. But the ghost of his touch lingered in a trail of warmth up the entire back of her legs.
Damn her if she didn’t regret her words.
The silence between them grew heavy with a tension that had nowhere to go. It was trapped between their bodies, in the exchange of heat, in his fist curled against the cavern’s floor.
What the fuck had she been thinking?
She almost jumped out of her skin when he spoke moments later.
“What was your count?” he asked.
“What?”
“Your kill count?”
The competition. She’d forgotten about it. With freezing and drowning to death and all. “How much is an ogg worth?”
“One kill is one kill.”
Vessa swore she heard a smile in his voice. This was at least safer territory. “Sounds like you’re just trying to ensure your victory. By your rules, I was at twenty-two, I think. Bymine, I won the moment my raze sword went through the ogg’s eye.”
