The words settled between them with the heaviness of truth.Something shifted between them. The adrenaline, the rage, the shock, allof it changed shape in the silence. Magnus’s gaze dropped to her mouth. Heat followed it instantly, so sharp and sudden she nearly lost balance again.
“This is a terrible idea,” she whispered.
“Probably.”
“If you kiss me now,” she pressed, “it won’t be because this is wise.”
Magnus’s eyes turned molten. “I don’t remember claiming wisdom.”
That should have warned her.Instead it made her step closer.His body reacted instantly. The shift was slight but unmistakable, satisfaction and hunger and something darker flashing across his face before he crushedit.
“What would it be, then?” she asked.
Magnus bent his head until his mouth hovered a fraction from hers. “Relief,” he said. “Rage.” His hand tightened at her waist. “Possession.”
The last word shot through her like lightning.
Her hand slid from his chest to his jaw. Rough stubble rasped against her palm. Magnus inhaled once, sharply. It was the first truly unguarded sound she had heard from him all night.
“I thought you might die,” she confessed.
Magnus closed his eyes for half a beat.When he opened them, the self-discipline in him looked scorched around the edges.“I didn’t.”
“No.”
“But he did.”There was no triumph in the words. Only fact. Only the cold promise of what happened to men who reached for something under Severin protection.
“You killed him,” shesaid.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t regret it.”
“No.”
The honesty should have chilled her. Instead it steadied her.Because there were no lies left in this room. Not in the blood. Not in the bandage. Not in the heat building between them. He had killed for her and would do it again if necessary.That knowledge should have sent her running.Instead she rose onto her toes and brushed her mouth againsthis.
Magnus went still.For a single heartbeat. Long enough for her to understand the choice still belonged to both of them.“No one touches what’s mine,” he informedher.
Then his hand came up, sliding into her hair as he pulled her into the kiss.Heat from his skin and the sharp taste of adrenaline still lingered between them. The last fragile thread of control snapped.
Magnus took over.
His mouth claimed hers with a force that sent a shock straight through her body. One hand cupped the back of her head while the rest of him closed the remaining space between them, pressing her against him so completely, the power coiled in everyinch of hisbody.
The kiss was nothing like the careful heat that had lived between them before. There was nothing restrained about it. Relief and fury and raw male hunger crashed together in the hard seal of his mouth on hers. He kissed her like a man holding himself together by force and finally running out of reasons to keep trying.
Elia made a sound against his lips that didn’t sound like herown.
Magnus answered it with a groan and dragged her flush againsthim.
The bandaged arm limited him just enough to make the rest of him more deliberate. His uninjured hand slid to the back of her head while his body crowded hers into the edge of the table behind them. Her gown rustled as he pressed her back against the polished wood. The kiss turned deeper, wetter, more desperate, and all she could do was cling to him and open forit.
She tasted the sharp metallic rush of the fight on both of them. Rage. Male heat. Something dark and consuming in the way he devoured her as though the act of kissing her could erase the image of a blade at her throat.
When he finally tore his mouth from hers, they were both breathinghard.
Elia’s hands had slid up into his hair without her realizing it. Her fingers tightened there, holding him close even after the kiss broke. The heat of his skin burned against her palms. The bandage on his arm brushed her shoulder, areminder of theviolence that had brought them here and the man standing in front of her who had faced it without hesitation.
