48. Dimitri
48
DIMITRI
“ I am his great-granddaughter. The dwarven seer, Vanir, showed me.” She trailed off, as if there were more she did not wish to say. Or perhaps she wondered why she shared such deep things with him.
“Beyond any doubt?” he asked, desperate for any shred of hope that it wasn’t true—that she would not be pulled into the middle of the maelstrom with him. Desperate for her to continue, because hearing her speak was a balm after nothing but hate and conflict in his ears since he had last beheld her. Her palms still rested on his chest, her hands so delicate and light they felt as though he could break them with a thought. Her fragility terrified him.
“Beyond any doubt,” she whispered.
His insides twisted. This was all his fault—he kept making it worse, instead of staunching the flow. His unwitting thoughts had led Saradon right to her. Dimitri grasped her shoulders and met her gaze, trying to instil his urgency. “Then you must go. It is all the more reason to flee! He must not find you!”
She struggled in his grip, but he did not release her. “I don’t understand.”
“He knows , Harper. Even if he is not certain, he has strong suspicions. Enough for him to seek you. He wants you. If you go to him, you walk to your own doom. I cannot shield you from him. Please heed me. Please leave—with or without the dwarves.”
“Why do you care?” she asked him again desperately, her fingers winding into the silks of his shirt. It undid him.
“Because you made me!” he retorted before he could help himself. “Because you make me want to protect you from the tide of darkness that has been unleashed. Every damn thing you say and do makes me want you more—and I can take it no longer!”
“What?” she breathed, her face pale in the darkness. “Say that again. No lies.”
“I want you,” Dimitri growled, backing her into a tree. “I want you even though I know it is dangerous. I have wanted you since the moment you pulled that bow on me, and I saw the true colour of your spirit. I wanted you more when you held a knife to my throat and I realised fear would never fell your spirit. And I want you yet more every time you open that defiant little mouth of yours to call me out. I hate that you challenge me so, huntress. I love it. I desire it. I need it. And the peril we are in only makes me need you all the more, for if I am to die on the morrow, I want to die having known what it feels like to have tasted you.”
Compulsion crawled underneath his skin, urgent and consuming. He could hardly breathe past the torrent of it. His hands slipped inside her cloak to circle her waist, and she gasped at the contact. So did he. She felt even better under his hands than he had imagined. He would excise this demon from himself. Indulge this reckless want and purge it from his system. It was a kiss—just one. A harmless kiss. That would free him from this madness. This was nothing more than wanting what he could not have, and once he quenched that urge, it would be satisfied. Wouldn’t it?
And yet, as he felt her lithe body melt under his touch, he knew with deep certainly that it would not be enough. Far from it. The opposite. This would not quench the flames—this would ignite an inferno. Judgement on himself be damned, Dimitri wanted her. And one kiss did not cover what he wanted to do to her—but he would take it and anything else she would give him.
Dimitri drew closer, so close that every heaving breath of hers pressed against the beat of his own heart, and lowered his head, so that their noses brushed. She froze in place, silver eyes gleaming at him. Those beautiful lips of hers were so painfully close it sent every nerve ending alight within him, longing to fuse that final hair’s breadth. But he would not. Not without her permission. Because there would be no going back from this.
“Tell me no, and I’ll stop,” he said roughly as their breaths mingled. He trembled from the restraint. Part of him wished she would deny him. Part of him desperately wanted her to have some self-control where he did not, to end this madness, so his feelings did not endanger either of them any further. But instead, Harper tilted her mouth up, tightened her grasp on his shirt, and tugged him to her waiting lips. And Dimitri unleashed himself upon her.