Mariah looked up, holding his stare. Slowly, she raised her left hand.
And offered him the third finger.
The beat of his heart became a gallop. His lungs tightened and he shook his head on a reflex he couldn’t explain.
“You don’t want?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Andrian.” Mariah’s gaze pierced him. “Do not tell me what I want or don’t want. I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out where I belong. It wasn’t until I met you that I realized I might have found it.”
His throat burned. Gods, whatever she saw in him, he didn’t understand it. He would never understand it.
But he would always and forever be grateful for it.
“Fine,” he said hoarsely. “But you know as well as I do,nio—Onitan queens don’t marry. Despite all these weak lords trying to control a powerful woman, there is no King of Onita.”
And if by some insane circumstance there could be, it would never be him. He was a cursed son with foreign blood. Despite that old name she called him sometimes—Rhoi, the one that meant king—the life flitting through his mind was nothing more than a distant, wild dream.
“I don’t care about any of that,” she whispered, pulling him away from a fantasy that could never be. “I never wanted to be Onita’s queen. Tonight, I want to forget that I am. Tonight, I just want to beyours.”
Andrian wasn’t sure who moved first.
Maybe they both did. Maybe something snapped, an arrow shot from the stars. One moment she was there, offering him her hand in a way that both healed and broke his heart, and the next they were wound together, hands buried in each other’s hair, lips catching the other’s sobs.
He pushed her back onto the piled pillows and blankets, sinking between her thighs as they wrapped around his hips. He consumed her hungrily, lips and teeth grazing a path across her jaw, down the smooth column of her throat, over the line of her collarbones. The sweet bite of jasmine swallowed him up, drowning out the lingering scent of the meadow’s snowdrop blossoms.
He pulled back, breathless, body buzzing. The way it always did with her. The way he could always feel his control stretching, thinning, breaking.
Andrian pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to her lips. Her cheeks were filled with that delicious flush of pink, andgods, he wanted to see it everywhere.
He found her left hand and brought it between them. A feral, ancient possessiveness swept through him as he gripped her third finger and slipped the silver ring over her knuckle.
He kissed her palm. “I want you to leave this ring on,” he murmured, “and take everything else off.”
Mariah’s flush deepened, and he couldn’t help his smirk. He rose to his knees then to his feet. She sat up as well, lips tilting into a smirk. She reached behind her head, pulling the tie to her dress. The gauzy material fluttered off her in waves, poolingon the makeshift pallet. The sweeping expanse of her skin was bared to him, shimmering softly in the moonlight.
Fucking gods.
She lifted her left hand, the small stone glittering. “I don’t usually like wearing jewelry,” she said, curling her toes into the soft furs. “But I agree, this one definitely looks best when I’m wearing nothing else.”
Andrian’s fingers were already working on the buttons of his shirt. He shrugged out of it, dropping it carelessly on the ground. His belt was next then the zipper to his trousers. His cock ached, but even that burned pleasure up his spine.
“Most clothing and adornments on you are fine, but they hide too much of you.”
Her smirk tugged higher. “Oh, yeah? But my mother’s ring really does it for you?”
“No longer your mother’s ring.” He pushed down his trousers, cock finally springing free. Feral need surged through him when her eyes dropped, expression heating. “Yours.” He fell to his knees, then to all fours. “And no longer something to be hidden.” He crawled forward, catching her leg in his hand, nose running a path up her inner thigh.
“Yours,” he repeated, spreading her legs, settling himself between them. “Andmine.”
His mouth met her center, her back arching off the furs. Her sweetness flooded his mouth, and he drew in a great, desperate breath.
He didn’t think there was anything the gods could create in the afterlife that was better than this. No heavenly flavor, no nectar or fruit or wine that could compare. She was jasmine and cedarwood and honey, something rich and womanly and laden with starlight.
He consumed her as he always did—like a man starved, desperate for a morsel of his next meal. He wasted no time, didn’t bother taunting or teasing her.
He’d tortured himself for too long, denying himself. He wanted to make her come quickly, to make her so perfectly ready for him, because by now he was afraid he would die if he had to spend a single moment longer not buried deep inside her.
Gods, he’d even gotten jealous of his fucking shadows. That was how out of his mind with desperation he was.
