“Sariah.”
“Yes?” Tilting my face, I drag a long lick up his chin, across the seam of his lips, relishing the salty tang of the river. Ofhim.
A growl rips out of him, barely held back by clenched fangs. His breathing turns violent, the raw need inside him breaking containment. It saturates his limbs, his body, until he burns with the need to touch me.
“Stop,” he growl-shouts. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to save my mate.”
Another roll of my hips. Another lick across his mouth. “Mmm. And what do you thinkI’mdoing?”
A fiery warning flashes in his eyes. He holds himself back, but it requires all two hundred and twenty-six years of discipline, every drop of obedience he’s cultivated over centuries. Even then, he teeters, clinging to the cliff by the tips of his claws. He’s a pile of kindling waiting to explode. An ocean of boiling water, trapped beneath half an inch of ice.
“Stop. It,” he growls. “Just let me save you.”
“No,” I breathe. I can scarcely tell where all this is coming from, who this person is inside my skin, who’s rubbing herself against this goblin while his hold on control slips and slips and slips.
I only know I need him not to die, that I need something very different from him right now. An exchange. An agreement. A promise that he won’t leave me unless I say so.
The same promise Amriel gave me last night.
“Claim me,” I say. “Do everything you want to me.”
“No,” he says, half-gasp, half-snarl. “I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t. Youcan’t. Amriel didn’t.”
He breathes and breathes and breathes. He’s trembling now, nothing but a raging battle locked within a prison of blood and bone. He wants to. So badly his need nearly blinds him, but he can’t hurt me, has to protect me, would doanythingto keep me safe, even from himself, and…
His thoughts fly like bits of torn paper, spinning out of control.
I spend another moment trying to break his rapidly thinning hold on himself. Then I realize—I knowexactlyhow to tip the balance. He told me how himself.
A slow smile bleeds across my face. His brows lower, maybe catching the intent in my mind as I wriggle out from underneath him.
I don’t give him time to think, or sink in the blade. I just surge to my feet and turn my back on him.
And then I take off running.
Chapter 24
My soles slap against wet sand, glittering water fountaining around my feet. My arms pump, my breath turning molten in my lungs.
I run and run and run.
The blazing sky sets the riverbed alight, its vivid light pulsing in time with my heart. I wheel through a landscape of light and color, every muscle primed for the moment the Shadow will catch me.
Which he will. And I want him to. Because I’m not running for my life, this time, but for his.
A bellow erupts behind me. It rolls across the landscape, drowning out my splashing steps, the slap of my sodden dress as it smacks against my thigh. His roar soaks through my skin, through blood and sinew, melding with my bones.
Not a threat, this time, but a promise.
I sprint as fast as I can. Hurtle toward a sky that has turned the colors of stained glass. My fingers throb with anticipation, my pulse so intense I can feel it in my teeth.
He’ll catch me. Claim me. Finally.
And I’llenjoyit.
I don’t even hear the Shadow coming. One moment, I’m streakingacross color-soaked sand. The next, something solid hits me from behind, taking me to the ground. My hands splash into glittering water, my wet hair tangling around my arms. Then I’m being dragged, strong hands around my waist.
