“I was terrified.”
“I know. I could smell it. But you didn’t let the fear control you.” I reach up. Cup her face with my free hand. Her skin is warm beneath my palm, alive in a way that makes my cold blood surge. “No one has looked at me like that in centuries. Like I might be something other than the end of their story.”
“You’re not.” She turns her face into my palm. Her lips brush my skin—not quite a kiss, but close. The sensation shivers through me, hot and sharp. “You’re the reason I’m still alive. The reason I have a chance to save Gror. The reason I’m here, instead of claimed by the Ledger Master.”
Her scent fills my nostrils. Sweat and fear and something underneath—something warm. Alive. Wanting. I’ve been breathing it in since the apartment, trying to ignore the way my body responds. Trying to pretend I don’t notice how my pulse quickens when she’s near, how my blood runs hot when she challenges me.
“I wanted—“ The confession sticks in my throat. I force it out anyway. “I wanted to be what you saw when you looked at me. Even if it was a lie. Even if the thing you thought you saw doesn’t exist.”
“It’s not a lie.”
She kisses me.
Not gentle. Not tentative. She surges forward, hands fisting in my hair, mouth claiming mine with a ferocity that matches everything I know about her. She tastes like blood—mine, maybehers, the copper tang of survival—and beneath that, something sweeter. Something real.
My restraint shatters.
Two centuries of denying myself anything good. Two centuries of pretending I’m nothing but a weapon, that I don’t need warmth or comfort or touch. Two centuries of walls and discipline and the careful hollow where feelings should live?—
Gone. All of it. Destroyed by this woman who refuses to see me as a monster.
I haul her against me. One arm around her waist, the other cupping the back of her head, pulling her closer, deeper into the kiss. She gasps against my mouth—surprise or desire, I don’t know, don’t care. Her body fits against mine like she was made for this, curves pressing into my hard planes, her heartbeat racing where our bodies meet.
My tusks graze her throat. She shudders. Not fear—I know what her fear smells like, and this isn’t it. This is heat. Want. Need as desperate as my own.
“Rathok—“ My name sounds different in her mouth. Breathless. Hungry.
“Tell me to stop.” The words come out as a growl. “Tell me and I will. But tell me now, because in another minute?—“
“We have four hours. Don’t stop.”
I don’t.
