Meryn presses the advantage in half a breath, knocking me over and pinning me. Her hand presses into my throat, applying just enough pressure to declare victory. I swallow, her fingers on my neck. Her eyes follow the bobbing movement, then flick back up to mine.
Her body is pressed close, warm, her chest heaving as she pants. A bead of sweat rolls down her chin and falls to my chest. I want to lean up and lick the other beads from her skin.
Does she taste as sweet as she smells?
I stop straining against her hold, dropping my dagger. Then I wrest my hands from her grip and catch her waist, pulling her closer. Pulling her into me.
This is a dangerous fucking game I’m playing.
Meryn’s eyes lock onto mine, and electricity surges between us. “What was that yesterday, Stark?” Her voice is quiet but heated. “What happened between us, with my power?”
It takes all my strength to look away from her lips, moving so close to mine.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Cratos didn’t know, either—the only thing we could agree on was that it existed separately from his and Anassa’s mate bond. It’s something that seems uniquely tailored to me and Meryn. And for the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been trying so hard not to fixate on it.
On the way it felt to be united in our minds and what it unleashed in both of us.
“Should we try it again?” she asks tentatively, and I nearly throw her off me.
I don’t know what I’ll do if that connection comes rushing back. If it once again surfaces my fascination with her, the pull I’ve tried so hard to bury since the moment I first saw her fight. When I saw the untamed fire in her eyes and hungered to free it. I wanted to revel in its burn, just lucky enough to be in its heat.
I ache for her, and I hate her for it.
I hate myself for not being good enough for her, for bringing out the worst in her.
I absolutely fucking loathe the Sovereign Alpha for issuing a demand that I need to stand against. For putting me in a position where doing my duty—protecting Meryn—means denying myself the thing I want the most.
And despite all this, I open my mouth, and what speaks is my yearning. “Yes.”
She’s calmer now, and yet she doesn’t need her anger to trigger it. She must sense where the tie between the two of us lives, because I can tell the moment she lets her walls back down.
That dark connection between us reforges. Her power rushes in, my mind opening to receive it.
To receiveher.
It’s intoxicating.
I’m inside every inch of her, while still at a remove, watching her throughmy own eyes. I sense the way the heat of my hands on her waist is affecting her. Feel the hitch in her breath as she studies my mouth, then raises her eyes back up to mine.
Sensation, everywhere. Power, too. Our minds are twined together tight.
And I can no longer hide the desire coursing through me.
I watch as she realizes the depth of it. Her heart starts to pound for a different reason, nipples hardening.
I know the moment she starts getting wet for me.
Gritting my teeth, I resist.
The only way to protect her from Siegrid—and from me—is to resist this pull.
Fuck, why did I let myself give in to this? In to my need to touch her, to hear her moans and know I’m the cause?
She squirms against my hold, as overwhelmed as I am. Her ass drags across my crotch accidentally, and as I grow half hard, I sense her registering it. The blood rushes down to my cock, and she senses that, too.
With a dazed moan at the back of her throat, she rubs herself against me again—intentionally this time.
