Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
D rake offered me his hand to help me up and I took it, still stunned to find that he had come to my aid. My palm slid into his and his fingers wrapped around me as he pulled me to my feet so fast that I had to steady myself against his chest.
I was half aware that his guard and maid were watching us, but I couldn’t draw my eyes from his face.
Between the time we had shared on the balcony earlier tonight, and finding him here now, wet with blood for me, I was starting to feel something I had never felt before.
Could this man really be someone I could trust?
Someone who didn’t flinch at seeing a woman fight in battle, who actually encouraged it.
I acted on instinct alone, knowing now was not the time, but I was high on the wildness of battle and the freedom I had claimed out here in this fight.
I fisted his shirt, drawing him down to me so our lips met, fire coursing along my spine at the reckless act.
But I was tasting freedom for the first time in my life and there was no one here to stop me from being rash now.
He stilled in surprise and for a moment I thought he was going to pull away, but then he yanked me closer by one hand on my back and cupped my jaw in his grip, dominating the kiss as he pressed his tongue into my mouth.
It was the first time I had ever allowed a man to touch me like this and it set my pulse skittering across my body as I met his tongue with tentative strokes of my own.
I didn’t know what I was doing but Drake’s mouth moved against mine like he had done this a thousand times, and that didn’t bother me somehow.
I just wanted to learn this, to know how to express this passion in me and offer it to the man who had fought at my side up here against the monsters that had come to destroy my city.
His kiss was filthy, savage, ruinous and I let it devour me from the inside out, burning up in the heat of it. This was already the wildest night of my life and I wanted to squeeze every drop of adventure out of it before I was forced back into my cage.
Drake was the embodiment of the freedom I had never been able to possess myself, and I tasted that on him now, drinking it into myself and taking a piece of it for my own.
His life was what I wanted mine to look like.
Him with his carefree smiles and easy choices.
He could do anything he wanted, be anything he wanted, and I hated him for that almost as much as I liked him for it.
Our kiss was a battle of its own, our wills colliding and neither of us bowing to each other’s wants. We took from each other as much as we gave, our fingers biting into one another’s flesh as we stole this moment of bliss among the chaos that was awaiting us beyond it.
And though I knew Drake Nazari was a suitor, that he had come here to claim me and my throne just as all the other suitors had, I was starting to wonder if there was a chance for freedom in a life with him.
That maybe if he could kiss me in the face of a battle and not sneer at the sight of a princess dressed in the blood of her kills, then perhaps there was a match to be made here that could benefit us both.