Chapter 11 Merrit #2
I couldn’t read him. Not the way I read the others. Only shards ever bled through, never enough to tell if the wild in his eyes meant danger or something else entirely.
I should have pulled back. Should have told him to stop. Instead, I tilted my chin higher, defying him, even as I gave him more of my throat.
A sound rumbled in his chest, low and rough. His thumb swept higher, brushing the corner of my mouth. He froze there, scarlet eyes burning, his lips parting just enough to bare fangs still wet with blood.
My hands trembled. I signed against his chest, small, broken, “Don’t.”
The snarl that ghosted across his mouth didn’t seem meant for me—almost like it was for the memory of hands on my body that weren’t his. His grip on my jaw tightened, not cruel but certain, as if he were anchoring me to him for fear I would slip away.
He leaned closer, his breath scalding my cheek, and for one long moment, the whole world balanced on the edge of those fangs. His mouth lowered—slow, inexorable—and every nerve in my body screamed to brace, to surrender, to run.
The forest held its breath with me.
And then the spell shattered with the snap of branches. Torchlight swelled through the mist as laughter spilled harsh and ugly between the trees.
Kieran’s head whipped toward the sound, every line of him going taut. His blood still burned through me, hot and electric where it had touched my wound, but before I could drag in enough breath to sign again, he moved.
One moment, he was crouched before me, the next, his arms scooped me off the ground. My legs dangled uselessly, my body light in his grip. He pressed me hard into the rough bark of the nearest tree, caging me there with the solid weight of his body.
My breath caught. My fingers clutched instinctively at his shoulders as my heart hammered, panic and something hotter colliding in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice so low and ragged I almost thought I’d imagined it. “Saints forgive me.”
Sorry? For what? For lifting me, for pinning me here, for the wild hunger burning in his eyes? I didn’t have time to understand.
Then his mouth dropped to my throat. Fangs split my skin, and fire tore through me. Pain landed first—sudden and shocking as it wrenched a gasp from my chest. Then a flood of white-hot pleasure followed, molten and unbearable, coursing through my veins until every nerve ending burned alive.
My head hit the tree with a thud. My hands fisted in his shredded coat, clutching like I could anchor myself against the dizzying rush. Every pull of his mouth sent another surge through me, vicious and searing, until I thought it dissolved itself into the ether.
The world collapsed down to him—his mouth at my throat, the scrape of fangs, the relentless heat curling low in my belly. My body shook with it, caught between terror and something hotter, impossible to deny.
At the edges of reality, torchlight flickered. Voices cracked through the dark, muffled and faint. A ripple of thought scraped past, but it barely touched me. None of it mattered. Not when Kieran’s mouth was on me. Not when I was unraveling in his arms.
I was so close—shaking, strung too tight, my body spiraling toward something that terrified me as much as it consumed me—
And then he wrenched away, leaving my throat cold and wet, my body trembling on the edge of something that never came. The rush shattered, leaving me raw and aching. My chest hollowed out, brutal as a stab between the ribs. He’d given me fire, dragged me to the brink—then left me in the ashes.
“Enough,” he rasped, voice rough and cruel in the quiet.
The word burned hotter than his fangs had. “Enough.” As if I were a mistake. Like I hadn’t wanted every brutal second. Saints help me, for that breath, I almost hated him for it.
My knees buckled, useless beneath me. I would have slid down the bark if his hand hadn’t caught my arm, steadying me just long enough to make the rejection worse. His grip was merciless, impersonal, the touch of someone restraining, not someone holding.
My fingers twitched, jerky, trying to form the signs that crowded in my skull, but they came out broken, useless shapes, my hands shaking too hard to make sense of anything. He didn’t look. He didn’t let me finish.
The wild glow in his eyes dimmed to something colder, harder.
He bent, snatched my fallen dagger from the leaves, wiped the hilt once on his shredded coat, and pressed it into my palm, curling my fingers around the hilt. Not a gift. Not a comfort. A reminder.
Then his arms swept me up again, like steel around my back and knees. My body curled into his chest whether I wanted it to or not, too weak to fight the hold. His jaw was tight, his gaze fixed ahead, every line of him carved from fury.
Through clenched teeth, he rasped, “I should never have touched you.”
The words cut deeper than the puncture wounds still throbbing at my throat. My hands twitched against his chest, wanting to strike, to do something—but nothing came. It was as if every single second I’d been in his arms had been a mistake he couldn’t wait to wash away.
And still he carried me, my stiff body in his arms as if I were his trophy, his jaw set, his stride unbroken, returning me to that den of vipers he called a Court.