I smiled shakily. “Can it be both? I am still cross with you, after all.”
“In that case,” he said teasingly, “feel free to torment me as much as you wish. It is a cruel punishment and I suffer ardently.”
He released my hand and raised a brow, a question and a challenge. Heat coiled like vines through me as I dabbed the cloth to the edge of his cut. He sucked a breath through his teeth. On his lips lingered a smile; a little wicked and quite pleased. I looked at him with feigned irritation.
“You seem truly in terrible distress.”
“Immensedistress.”
His smile widened as I brushed the cloth slowly along the cut—from the hollow beneath his collarbone over his carved chest and the taut muscle of his stomach. As I cleansed the wound Adrik eased, unclenching his arms and sinking into the chair. The wind had calmed in the wake of my magic, and the worst of the storm had passed. For a long while Adrik stared past me from the window, brows furrowed. He winced when I set the bowl aside.
“What am I to do, Ana? How am I to tell these people that we must start anew without knowing how? Where? There is no land unclaimed, none that is livable at least—”
“You have two witches among your people,” I said quietly. “We might carve out a place for us among rock and stone and sand. It will take a while but—” I stopped myself, raising a brow at the sparkle in his eye.
“You will stay with us?”
I stilled, realizing I had spoken too quickly. “I promised to help you save your people. I will stay with you for as long as you need me.”
He gazed at me with a tenderness I could scarcely stand to look at. He bent forward and cradled my face in his hands. They trembled lightly. “I cannot imagine there will ever come a time I will not need you, Ana.” His quick, shallow breaths caught likea breeze in my hair. “The spirits may swoon over you, but they mock the king who danced with the wild queen beneath the moon. They say that he held his breath all the while. That he went a little mad. That—while he danced with her—he thought of a riverbank and a wildflower meadow and he wished nothing more than to know if she thought of it too.”
I tilted my face, lips brushing against his ear. “She did.”
We met somewhere in the middle, groaning with relief as our lips collided.
His were like ice against mine. Perhaps he had lost too much blood. Perhaps the cold of the forest lingered. I dug my fingers into the nape of his neck and I urged him close, breathing warmth back into him. If I had ached before, it was nothing to this; to the flaming tightness low in my stomach, robbing me of all sense. He nipped with a growl at my lower lip, setting skin and blood ablaze.
I burned for him, utterly.
He burned for me too.
I felt it in the heat of his touch, heard it in the low, sinful moans echoing mine. His fingers traced the length of my spine and came to rest at its base, sending another shiver of need through me. He pulled me fiercely into his lap, lips never ceasing their starved exploration of mine.
“Your wound,” I gasped when he drew me against his chest.
He took my hand in reply and laid it to his flaming skin. “It will heal within the hour," he murmured against my jaw. With lips and teeth he trailed wild kisses down the side of my neck. “I am half of a faerie, remember?”
I moaned as he brushed my blouse aside and sucked gently on my collarbone.
“Right,” I breathed. “A wicked, evil faerie set on tormenting me.”
“Oh yes,” he whispered with a low chuckle. “I will see to it that you must suffer as ardently as I do.”
I hummed, unable to speak as pleasure bloomed wherever his lips lay claim to me, wherever his hands delved—from my curls to the top of my thighs and along the hem of my blouse. His fingers slid beneath the linen, drawing me closer. His mouth travelled to the hollow beneath my throat.
“I am feeling rather wicked tonight,” he murmured into my skin.
I hissed in protest as he broke away to stare at me with kiss-red lips and a dark hunger that made my heart stumble.
“All that talk,” I said teasingly, grazing my nails along the edge of his jaw until he shuddered, “and not a single wicked deed to back it up. Come, Adrik. You need not be afraid to break me. Come, and show me your wicked ways.”
His gaze lingered another breath on mine, soft with the same curious longing that swelled achingly in my chest, sharp with the same desire that struck me again and again like lightning. He made a tender sound, half-laugh and half-groan. At last, he tangled a hand in my hair and he kissed me with such fury I knew he’d done away with patience and with restraint. Desire bled into wild, reckless despair. I sank nails and teeth into him as if he might turn into a dream and slip away if I did not hold tight.
“Ana.”
He must have said it once for every star in the skies—in a whisper, in a groan, in a breathless chuckle, in a plea. And like the stars, I burned for him, endlessly and fervently. Fabric ripped as he parted my blouse. I writhed beneath his finger, tracing with aching leisure the outline of my breast beneath a strip of lace. His name came from my lips like a curse.
“Please,” I rasped, mindless. “Please, Adrik.”
