“You really know how to woo a girl with sweet words,” I got out.
Darcke wetted his lips. “This is nothing, heir. I can get a lot fucking dirtier.”
I pinned him with a glare when his rage rolled through me, but the fingers I’d furled around the edge of the tableloosened when the bitter taste of fear followed. It wound around us like a violent wave trying to bring us down into the depths of the sea.
“You were scared,” I said, my voice coming out softer than I’d meant.
“Scared that you’d lost your fucking mind.”
I felt another rush of panic, one he was working hard to hide.
Pressing a finger into his chest, I whispered, “That’s not it, second.”
Because it wasn’t. Beneath that fury there was something even more dangerous—something we’d danced around for weeks now, joking and teasing and pretending it didn’t exist. My mind snapped back to the moment beneath the ice—to the collar around his neck, to my silent vow.
I’m going to free you.
Darcke’s eyes were wild, almost as dark as the war paint and tattoos around them. He was losing control, his patience with me ready to snap at any second. When I shifted, I accidentally arched my back into him, and my lips parted at the hardness pressing into my leg.
Our eyes dropped at the same time, and when they met again: static.
It was like being struck by lightning, the way his eyes heated. The air around us ignited, hotter than any flame or fire or sun I’d ever experienced. In the distance more doors shut, the hushed conversation that had leaked through the cracks in the walls muting until everything fell silent.
His legs trapped me against the table as he spread them, and an unbidden moan slipped past my lips when he pressed himself against me, the hard length of him starting an ache so deep I doubted it would ever leave my core.
“If that’s not it, then what,heir?” His breath fanned over my chest, and the hair on the back of my neck rose in response, thrills of desperate need running down my back.
You were scared I was going to die before you could kiss me.
You wanted to know what I felt about you before you couldn’t ask.
You were desperately, furiously, impossibly terrified of being alone again after you’d found someone who reminded you of yourself.
But I didn’t say that.
“You tell me,” I said instead.
When his hand trailed up my arm before cradling the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair as he angled it back, I stopped breathing. A small voice in the back of my mind whispered to me to stop—that I needed to end thisnow. But another also awoke—the one I’d heard right before finding my sword, when I’d realized who the real enemy was.
And if I was going to do that—if I was going to risk it all to win everything?
What did other stupid rules matter? I wasn’t going to Valhalla anyway. I’d been marked for Hel. So why not give them something to cheer about when I showed up?
Darcke went entirely still when something within me shifted.
His hungry eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
My eyes went between his as I listened to our hearts pound in sync.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“That was me giving in,” I whispered.
Darcke shook his head, but his hand slid farther into my hair, the other one settling on my hip, roughly dragging me against his hard body.
