“Tell me I’m wrong.”
Lightbringer said nothing.
Thirty-Four
Cara
Fear and I walked back through the encampment together. His fingers twined through mine, and I smiled up at him as best I could. He was still so damned handsome, this villain of mine, with his dark hair curling around his ears and the honey warmth of his eyes and the way he moved, all lean, muscular grace.
Once again, I was far too keenly aware of how the rebels were watching us. It was a mix of mortals and shifters and even—to my surprise—the occasional low Fae. Some of them were following us as we neared our quarters, seeking an audience with Fear, and I stiffened my shoulders along with my resolve. Luckily, he brushed them off.
I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s hero.
Not when I’d just seen my parents reunited after twenty years, after he had enchanted her and ruined her, trying to make me into a weapon.
Fear pulled me to a halt in front of the campfire in front of our quarters. The firelight cast flickering shadows, catching thegolden glimmer of his gaze, the softness of his lips above that hard jaw.
“Wife.”
Gods, he was good at that warm, rough rumble, that sex-soaked voice. It was fake, and yet something inside me still caught, like a spark igniting. “You’re exhausted. Let me take care of you.”
Perhaps he could see I was flagging, and he was trying to rescue me in his own way. Not for my sake, of course, but because he needed me at my best.
I smiled up at him. “You are so very good at that, husband.”
His gaze heated as if the wordhusbandmeant something to him. Gods, he was good.
His hand slid from mine to my waist, settling there as if it always belonged. Heat flared through me at the contact, sharp and unwelcome and impossible to ignore. I tilted my face up to his, leaning my body into his in a way that would read as trust. The fire crackled behind us, sending a burst of sparks into the air.
He dipped his head. My fingers slid over the back of his neck, finding some of his soft curls, the muscle there.
The first brush of his mouth against mine was light, almost careful. A lie.
His other hand came up, fingers sliding into my hair. The world narrowed abruptly to the heat of him, the press of his mouth, the slow, deliberate way he kissed me as if we had nowhere else to be, nothing else to do but this.
I parted my lips under his, letting him in just enough to sell it. My hand came up, sliding against his chest, feeling the steady strength of him beneath my palm.
He didn’t rush me. He followed my lead, waiting until my lips parted to deepen the kiss. That might have been the most dangerous thing of all, because it meant I chose every inch ofcontact between us. The way my body wrapped to his, my thighs finding either side of his leg, and my fingers tightened in his collar.
The kiss deepened by degrees, slow and controlled, a careful burn instead of a blaze. His thumb traced a path along my jaw, then stilled there, as if he could feel the tension I couldn’t quite hide, even now.
Even here.
Especially here.
For a heartbeat, I had forgotten why we were doing this.
Forgot the eyes on us, the performance, the careful lie we were building together.
There was only the way his mouth moved against mine—tender, unhurried, entirely certain—and the answering heat that coiled low in my stomach in spite of everything I knew, in spite of everything I should have felt.
His breath caught, barely, but I felt it like a crack in his armor. He wanted me too. He wasn’t entirely in control.
The fire snapped again, loud in the quiet that had fallen around us, and I became aware of the world rushing back in.
I drew back slowly, letting it linger, making the break look reluctant. My fingers curled in the front of his shirt a second longer before I let go.
His forehead rested briefly against mine, his breath brushing warm over my lips, close enough that anyone watching would think it intimacy.
