I put my arms around his neck and pull him closer, wanting nothing but his touch, his taste, the feel of his body against mine. He captures the sides of my face with his hands, staring down at me with his bottomless purple eyes.
“I can offer you nothing, Soli. I’m the prince of nowhere—a man without a country. I can’t deserve you.”
Laughter sings in my heart and escapes my lips. “You’remyprince. I deserve to have something for me, for once in my life. I want you. Ichooseyou. And maybe just for tonight, we can agree that we deserve each other. Kiss me, Kaelen. Make me feel wanted.”
“How can you feel anything else when you’re near me? I spend what feels like every minute of every hour trying to keep my hands off you,” he growls, frustration tightening his face.
“Then stop trying,” I demand, imperious, as if I have any right to make demands of this man. Thisprince.
Of anyone.
“As you command, my lady,” he murmurs, and then takes my mouth with all the heat and passion I’ve craved without knowing it for my entire life. Desire is a flash fire racing through my veins, turning myblood to flame, turning my body to an aching conflagration of desire.
I wonder how I lived without his kisses for so long.
He tastes like honey mead and heat andwant, and his lips are soft but firm. His tongue is driving me over an edge I never saw coming; he’s tasting me, and I’m tasting him, and I never, ever want this to end.
I wanteverything.
To hold him and kiss him and consume him.
To be consumed in return.
To take and give and take again, until the bottomless need inside me is finally filled, finally sated, finally overflowing with the intensity of this feeling.
Time slows and stops and races forward. He’s holding me so tightly I can feel his hard body imprinted on mine. I run my hands up his muscled arms and touch his neck, the sides of his face, his silky hair. Still kissing him. Still being kissed by him. Drunk on sensation, on desire, on primal, powerful, passionateneedso strong that I almost believe I can smell flowers surrounding us with the scent of spring.
Suddenly, Kaelen pulls back, panting, and stares at me with wild eyes. “How is this possible? How can I need you more than breath, or hope, or honor? I can’t do this. The quest—”
“The quest?” I’m dazed with sensation, dizzy with want.
His eyes darken, and in an instant, his expression changes.
Turns feral.
“Fuck the quest,” he growls, yanking me up to my feet and into his arms. Capturing my mouth with burning possession.
He wantsme.
I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on, looking wildly around when he lets me catch a breath, and I don’t know how to comprehend what’s happening to me right now, right here, in this ocean of flowers and sea of wheat and …
Flowers and wheat.
“Kaelen!”
He blinks, and the almost dazed expression I’m sure mirrors mine disappears. He’s instantly every inch the warrior as he scans the surrounding area. “What? Where?”
Igrab his head and tilt it to look down at the ground.“There.”
His gaze moves from the ground to my face, to the amulet—which still glows, but less brightly—and then up to the moonlit sky illuminating the field.
The field of growing plants where there had been nothing but burned stubble before.
Flowers grow right before our eyes in a perimeter several paces from the now lush and fertile soil beneath and around us.
“Is that wheat?”
We spin around, staring at the field.
