Lysa
The master suite was a kingdom of midnight velvet and mahogany, centered around a bed that looked large enough to lose a small battalion in. It was much larger than my already ridiculously large room.
“It’s ridiculous,” I said, running a hand over the duvet. “A person could go missing in these pillows and never be found.” A massive hearth crackled with flames that danced gold and silver, and shelves groaned under the weight of tomes and glowing crystals.
Fenrik leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing a shirt of white linen, unbuttoned halfway down his sternum, exposing the skin of his throat and chest. “It can beourbedroom from now on. If you wish.”
Heat flared in my cheeks. “And abandon the rustic charm of the guest wing?” I teased, turning to face him. “Mycurrent room has excellent ventilation. Mainly because the window latch is broken and the wind howls through it like a dying banshee.”
Fenrik didn’t smile. His gaze dropped to my mouth, heavy and darkened with a hunger that had been prowling around us for the last seven days. It had been a week of torture. A week of “Lysa, you need rest” and “Lysa, drink this tonic,” while the air between us grew thick enough to choke on.
Just three days ago, he’d insisted on carrying me down the stairs because I’d stumbled over a loose rug. I’d wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in the curve of his shoulder. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been wriggling against him until his stride faltered. I’d looked up to find his jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered there, his eyes blown wide. He’d deposited me on a settee with abruptness that bordered on rude and vanished to “inspect the perimeter” for two hours.
Then yesterday, in the library. I’d been hot, my temperature regulation still erratic after the Dragonheart extract, and had lifted my hair off my neck, piling it messily atop my head while humming a tune. I’d stretched, arching my back, letting out a sigh. A book had snapped shut with the force of a gunshot. When I looked over, Fenrik was gripping the leather cover so tightly his knuckles were white, staring at my exposed throat as if he wanted to bite it. He’d sworn, his trousers tented painfully. I’d laughed, breathless, while he adjusted himself and stalked off to compose a symphony of frustration on his piano.
“I want you,” he said now, his voice rough. He pushed off the doorframe and stalked toward me. The movement was predatory, the grace of the beast beneath the skin. He stopped inches from me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
My eyes traced the faint, silvery scars that webbed across his throat and down his ribs, the remnants of where the shadow had anchored itself.
“Fenrik,” I breathed, my own pulse jumping. I reached out, my fingers brushing the open collar of his shirt, tracing the line of his clavicle.
He flinched, a sharp intake of breath hissing through his teeth. “Lysa. Your hands.”
“They’re fine,” I said. I stepped closer, eliminating the space between us until my breasts brushed against his chest.
His hands came up to hover over my waist. “You are still healing. You nearly burned yourself out.”
“I am healed,” and to prove it, I slid my hands inside his shirt, palms flattening against the hard muscles of his abdomen.
His hands slammed onto my hips, gripping me with force, pulling me flush against him. I gasped as the hard ridge of his arousal pressed against my stomach, unyielding and demanding. He was massive, shaking with the effort of holding back.
“I tried,” he groaned, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his hot mouth dragging over my pulse point. “I tried to be noble. I tried to wait.”
“Stop waiting,” I said, tilting my head back, offering him everything.
He bit down gently, and a jolt of liquid fire shot straight to my core. My knees buckled, and he swept me up, not carrying me to the bed like in the dreams I’d had almost every night by now, but pressing me back against the nearest wall.
His mouth captured mine, and the world narrowed down to the pressure of his lips. I whimpered, the sound swallowed by his mouth, and opened for him. His tongue swept inside, hot and demanding. We were starving. I’d been so busy keeping him alive, keeping the curse from eating him hollow, that I hadn’t realized how hollow I had become until he began to fill me.
My hands were frantic, useless things. They clawed at his shoulders, tangled in the short silk of his hair, desperate to bring him closer when there was no space left between us. I tugged at his waistband, my fingers slipping on the leather. I was so clumsy. The buckle jammed giving way to a breathless laugh that bubbled up from my throat.
“I’m—I can’t—“ I stammered, heat flooding my face.
“Hush.” Fenrik pulled back a fraction, his forehead resting against mine, eyes dark and blown wide. “I’ve got you.”
His hands replaced mine. Large, calloused, and devastatingly competent. With two deft movements, the leather gave way, and the sound of the buckle unfastening was the loudest thing in the room. He knew how to dismantle the barriers between us. The thought that he had done this before, learned the geography of a woman’s body with such precision,should have made me jealous, or so the books I’ve read had said. Instead, it made my core clench with a wet, heavy heat.
He stripped the shirt from his body, and the air in the room seemed to vanish. The silver scars from the parasite were a map of agony written across his torso, lightning strikes of pale tissue against his skin. He stiffened as my gaze dropped to them, his breath hitching, waiting for the flinch.
I didn’t flinch. I reached out, my fingertips trembling as I traced the line of silver that curled over his lower rib. It was smooth, warmer than the rest of him.
“Look at that, I’m not the only scarred one. You’re in the same boat as Kirion and me.”
“Lysa,” he smiled. I leaned in, pressing my lips to the scar over his heart. I felt the slam of his pulse against my mouth. I kissed the silver path, tasting salt and skin.
Fenrik shuddered, a full-body tremor that shattered his rigid control. His hands fisted in my hair, gripping tight enough to sting, anchoring himself to me. I felt so clumsy, unlearned in this language of skin and friction. I didn’t know if I was doing it right, didn’t know if the way I arched my back into his touch was too eager, too wanton. But when I ran my hands down the hard planes of his back, digging my nails in as he grinded his hips against mine, he let out a guttural sound that vibrated straight through my womb.
“Please,” I begged, not even sure what I was asking for.
