I nearly jumped out of my skin from the intrusion. “Gods above, what do I have to do to get some peace and quiet around here?” I snapped, power prickling alongside my annoyance.
Standing, I turned to find none other than the autumn commander himself clad in a loose pair of slacks and an infuriatinglydelicious tight shirt. His eyes sharpened on me like they had just before we’d been attacked in the woods—like he’d marked a threat—though his countenance didn’t change.
“What do you want?” I asked, hand on hip.
He cocked a brow, and I didn’t miss how he widened his stance before crossing his arms, the rim of the short sleeves going taut, and something about his threatening posture made my vision go red.
At long last, rational thought left me, every fiber of my being lighting up with a wonderfully harsh tingling of magic. In that moment, all I wanted—allitwanted—to do was hurt him. No, annihilate him. However, it wanted to play with its food first, and as I’d learned earlier, words were one of my best weapons against the high and mighty commander.
“Do you like the view?” I asked, splaying my arms wide before I turned in a slow, mocking circle. “Is that why you’re out at this hour, come to look at your, what did you call me…oh right, your sacred star…yourprecious. Little. Spark?” The last three words came out as a sneer.
Beautiful, lethal darkness pulled around him, matching the glare he pinned me with. I smirked, knowing just how much he hated me classifying myself as an object.
“When’s the last time you used your powers?” he demanded, his tone slipping into a dangerous timbre.
“Wouldn’t. You. Like. To. Know.” I accentuated each word with a short step toward him, dropping my shawl to the ground on the last word.Gods, it was hot out here.
“It was your dream, wasn’t it. What was that…two nights ago?” he said, more to himself than me. The depth with which he looked at me had every facet of my being ignite until I was no longer able to discern where the burning intensity of my magic stopped, and I began.
As if sensing it, Endymion’s gaze turned predatory, his mouth hitching up in a smirk that was so downright sinister it almost had me sucking my bottom lip between my teeth. Then, his eyed draggedtheir way from the tips of my bare toes all the way up in one, slow, motion as he drank in every, last detail.
My heart—no, my magic—no, both—fluttered.
“I do,” he said in a low drawl, the other side of his mouth ticking up. “Like the view, that is.”
Delicious, white-hot fury seared me into place as he closed the gap until we were mere inches away, forcing me to tilt my chin to meet his eyes.
Unable to form words, I swallowed, nearly panting from the inferno consuming my every, delicate, sense. And while a distant part of me wanted to step away, my magic wanted nothing more than for me to cease the space between us.
He walked around me, and I was helpless to stop a shudder rolling down my spine. Endymion’s warm breath tickled the nape of my neck, and my eyes fluttered closed for the briefest moment. “Don’t deny it, Nyleeria,” he whispered, his voice soft and velvety.Gods, I didn’t want to—I was so tired of fighting. I tilted away, exposing my long neck to him, and this time, my teeth found my bottom lip.
I was reduced to a swirling, wanton mess of an all-consuming blazing fire.
Nothing else existed outside the raw power radiating off him at my back, the warm breaths on my neck, and the magic that would surely bring me to my knees.
“I have to deny it,” I said through heavy breaths, knowing I was on the precipice of losing all control—or maybe I already had.
Glittering darkness slowly blotted out the moonlight as it encased us in its safety, and as it closed completely, the tingling nearly doubled all throughout my body.
I bit down a moan as tendrils of magic caressed their way from my temple down to the side of my neck, trailing down to my shoulder, where I knew his mouth hovered.
A whimpering sound slipped past my lips.
He stepped closer, the heat of his skin mixing with mine. “In this dome. For this moment. Be mine,” he whispered.
“Yours,” I found myself whispering. My breath hitched at the pulse of magic that rippled off of him, and in that moment I finally I gave in. In a flash, every ounce of anger I’d been holding on to, all of the hurt, and the doubt and the pain I tried to hide bolted to my fingertips. The rush of it had me staggering, but his magic wrapped itself around me, holding me in place.
And I let it.
“I’ve got you.”
“I know,” I breathed, pleasure building through me, all around me.
“Power like ours,” he said, voice still a whisper, “must be cycled continuously, or it will consume us. You can create worlds, or end them, Little Star—but you can’t hold on to it.”
“I don’t want to destroy,” I pled.
“Then don’t.”
