Patting doesn’t work either.
By the time I’ve tried everything I can think of, Antony has stopped picking at his plate and leans back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he could be silently laughing at me.
A possibility that’s confirmed when he chortles, “What are you trying to do?”
After my intense interaction with Galla, I must now look absurd, patting and prodding and tugging at this beautiful material. “I’m trying to make it change, but it seems to be stuck in this form. At least while I’m sitting.”
Without warning, he darts forward, sliding out of his chair before I can blink. His arms wrap smoothly around me as he kneels beside my seat, one arm at my waist, the other running up my back, his fingers splaying across my shoulder blades.
Despite the suddenness of his movement, I relax at his touch. Even if I feared he meant me harm—which I don’t—I’m as covered in metal as he is.
His voice is low and soft. “I have an idea.”
I gasp as he tugs me forward, at the same time raising his knee so that he slides me forward onto his thigh. A shot of heat pulses through me as he slowly pulls me forward, the apex between my legs pressing onto his thigh, building on the ache that started last night and hasn’t gone away.
As his gaze suddenly devours me, his eyes darken with need, and his whisper is silken. “Whatever it is you want, try not to think about it.”
Impossible.
How can Inotthink about what I want rightnow?
I want this ache to reach its peak, and the only way that can happen is if I give in to the sudden and reckless impulses that will render me more vulnerable than I already am.
But even my survival instincts can’t seem to surface right now. My body has convinced me I’m invincible in this dress, and I need to cling to that belief, no matter how false it could be, because I won’t survive the Starlit Court otherwise.
I tell myself all I want is to ease this ache a little.
Just a little.
Allowing my weight to sink harder against him, I stifle my moan and pray only that the downward pressure will dull the neediness flowing through my core.
As my body rests heavier, his fingertips find their way up the back of my neck to my scalp, small, soothing movements that won’t tangle the strands but send torturous shivers down my spine.
“If we didn’t have somewhere to be,” he murmurs, his face close to mine, his voice more ragged than I was expecting, “I would peel back these threads and discover all your truths.”
My truths?
“Ask me anything,” I whisper. “I will answer.”
His pupils are dilated. I sense his quietly indrawn breath. I feel a question on his lips, but he doesn’t utter it, and somehow, his silence is more agonizing to me than the pleasure I can’t attain.
With a quiet exhalation, he leans back. Just enough for me to catch my breath and remember where I am and how perilous my safety is in this place.
“Sadly,” he says. “I think that worked.”
His gaze flows down my body as he slides me off his knee, putting me back on my feet while he rises upward.
I force my focus back to myself.
The dress has changed its form. While the inner layerremains around my entire body, which would explain why I didn’t feel it transform, every trailing layer is gone; the extra material is now drawn up around my body to resemble an armored combat suit. Even the boots are thicker.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the dress turned itself into armor when my thoughts became heated.
Antony clears his throat while I try to clear my head.
“If you’re finished eating, we should go,” he says.
