All I know is that Stellen is offering me the cloak he made for me, and his lips call me to him.
I crash into him.
He sweeps the garment around me, trapping the evaporating warmth within it as he catches me and deftly lifts me up against him, wrenching my legs around his hips before he drives me backward.
Back and back toward the rock wall wherethe stone stretches out beside the pond. The only section of visible rock where water doesn’t flow.
The cloak cushions my back, and his hand cushions my head as he presses me against the solid surface.
The material between us is too much—his pants, my armor. I ache for the barriers between us to be gone as I rock against him, needing release.
I expect him to kiss me, to claim my mouth, but his lips brush across my cheek, moving to my ear. I expect him to hum to me, but instead, his mouth closes around my earlobe, the softest tug, and his tongue swirls against the sensitive skin captured in his mouth.
The pressure of his torso against mine pins me to the wall, the hardness of his cock presses between my legs, and his left hand slides between us, grazing the side of my breast.
His thumb glides across my suddenly bare skin when the Lethian armor parts for his hand.
Skin on skin.
Ice burning through heat.
Flickgoes his tongue against my earlobe.
An orgasm crashes through me, dragging a cry to my throat, wrenching at my heart.
Waves of pleasure ripple from my core. Long, satisfying, earth-shattering waves.
He holds me through them, his silence wrapping around me, pulling my pieces back together until my breathing evens out and my cries become soft sighs.
I meet his pale eyes as I seek the beat of his heart beneath my palm. Pounding quietly.
Again, I wait for the crush of his kiss. For the slow undressing that must surely come because he’s hard between my legs and I’m acutely aware that the orgasm was all mine.
He doesn’t move.
My heart feels like it’s cracking apart, and I’m not sure why.
As if, through his silence, he can break apart the pieces of my soul as easily as he wrapped them together.
“What do you want from me?”
My question is barely a whisper. Barely a movement of air between us.
When he stays silent, I prompt, “I came out of the water like you asked. You owe me an answer.”
His voice is a knife, soft and sharp, as he speaks without intonation. “I want my family back.”
A short, brutal wish, absent of music, bare of power, but I feel his wish like blades.
“I will never have that,” he says. “So I will settle for this: I want my enemies dead. All of them. I want to sleep through the night without listening for assassins. You will make that happen.”
I’ve already begun.
I told him to come for me when the stars go out. He did, and in following my command, he had the chance to kill Antony.
I should have anticipated this. The three kings are mortal enemies. They want nothing more than to end each other.
From as early as I can remember, my father warned me that I was the kings’ greatest weapon against each other.
