27. Isla
27
ISLA
T he oxygen in the room hasn’t thinned, yet my lungs cramp and my tongue feels like scorched earth. “Since when do you even like me?”
“Since you flocked into my bathing chamber.” His confession skips through the torrid air and sinks into my chest, causing much rippling.
“Huh.” I lick my lips. “You have a really odd way of showing it.”
“Like I mentioned earlier, I’m completely out of my depth in matters of the heart.”
I give my quivering lips another tongue lash.
“I was hoping”—his focus is so fierce that I feel like I’ve just flown into one of the giant fire orbs dotting his hallway—“that it was reciprocal.”
I’m about to make a quip about hoping and what not but think better of making light of his declaration. The last thing I want is to destabilize this man who’s been celibate since my birth, almost as though he’s been waiting for me. Skies, what an odd contemplation that is…
When his throat bobs and uncertainty creases the skin around his lips, I say, “It’s very reciprocal.”
The breath he releases is so deep that it whooshes against me. Actually … When I spot my ponytail fluttering in a breeze of Konstantin’s making, I surmise it isn’t his sigh that I felt but his magic. I shuffle my feet in order to facilitate his mission of reeling me in.
When I’m finally situated between his thighs, he leans forward and ropes my waist, then perches me on his lap. “Did you need to make me wait quite so long on your reply?”
“You deserved it after you made that poor sprite fetch me blood.”
He winces.
“Relax. In hindsight, it was quite funny. The sort of humor that’s right up my family’s alley.”
Although he blanches and gives his head a little shake, his grimace gentles into a smile. “Surely not when directed at one of theirs.”
I tap the part of the chain that peeks out from his shirt. “ Hmm … perhaps don’t walk around too often without your nifty medallion.”
His fingers dance along the edge of my thigh, generating a delicious tingling.
“Tell me, Vizosh, do you still remember how to kiss, or will you need a refresher course?” I ask, fully aware that my comment will rankle him since there’s nothing a proud man loathes more than his faculties being questioned.
As predicted, his eyebrows slam low. Not as predicted though, his smile deepens, darkens.
“Did you think I’d inadvertently stick my tongue inside your ear instead of your mouth, Miss Ríhbiadh?”
I shrug a shoulder. “I hear that most of your people enjoy ear-play.” I stroke over his long ears with only my gaze, yet it makes the muscles in the Ice King’s leg harden beneath my ass. “But you didn’t seem like a fan.”
“I am.” He gently lays claim to my neck with one hand and grips the outside of my thigh with the other, tucking me infinitesimally closer. “Which is the reason I tried to keep you from touching them in public earlier.”
My skin breaks out in gooseflesh. “Am I permitted to touch them behind closed doors?”
“Yes, but…” He swallows. “But preferably not tonight. I’m coiled so tight that I…” Another swallow. “Safer not to.”
“For your trousers’ sake?”
“For your body’s sake.”
I inhale slow and deep. He must sense my twittering nerves, because his fingers begin to knead my neck like earlier at supper. I realize that his objective was conceivably not strangulation.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he rasps.
“About?”
“About that refresher course. I’d love some guidance.”
Like a murder of crows, my heartbeats careen against the walls of my throat, pooling beneath the roaming pads of his fingers.
“What should I do first?”
“You should, um—” I puff out a breath.
Skies, am I seriously panting? I don’t think I’ve ever been this hot for anyone in my entire life. That’s not true. I know I’ve never felt this way before.
Konstantin smirks, enjoying my sudden discomfiture. “I should…?”
Abort! my mind hollers. This is a terrible idea, Isla. You’re going to catch feelings for a man who isn’t your mate. Abort immediately.
“Perhaps we should—wait until I come back to—to explore whether—engaging in physicality is a sound idea. What if we’re a terrible fit? Then it’ll get awkward, and since we might have to hang out for months?—”
He guides my head down toward his and silences me with a kiss that streaks fire down my throat and into my chest. When his lips part mine, I grip his shoulders as though they were my last handholds on a cliff and tangle our tongues, meeting him twirl for twirl and suck for suck. He makes a noise deep in the back of his throat that slams into my core and makes my thighs clench.
The male has clearly not forgotten how to kiss. When he leans back, taking me with him, I adjust my position, swinging both my legs up to straddle him, and then I loop my arms around his neck and run my fingers through his mussed locks. He groans, and again, the sound hits me square in the core.
A core, which I am desperately trying to keep elevated, for I am also feeling strung very, very tight and am worried I’ll start rubbing myself against him like a bitch in heat.
But apparently, Konstantin desires just that, because he molds my ass with a firm hand, driving it down onto his bulge.
I gasp, and it jerks our lips apart, but our centers…they stay connected and pulsing. As we both draw in breath, Konstantin sweeps his thumb over my cheekbone, tracing my feather tattoo.
“You had me worried that my paleness and scrawniness were too off-putting.”
“I called you lean , not scrawny. As for your coloring”—I brush a lock out of his eyes—“I’m apparently into platinum-haired men now.”
With a deep sigh, he says, “I know you want a mate?—”
“Let’s not talk about that tonight.”
“No, we need to talk about this. You need to understand something.” He traces my waist, scattering goosebumps beneath the leather. “It fucking terrorizes me to feel so much for someone who might just up and leave me someday. Which is one of the reasons I’ve pulled away as of late. I thought that if I didn’t see you, my attraction would dwindle. It hasn’t. If anything, it’s made it worse.”
His lashes flutter over his all-consuming stare.
“But I’d never keep you from your preordained mate. I’d respect…” His throat bobs. “I’d be respectful of the Cauldron’s choice.”
I slide one palm up his chest, capturing the beats of his battering heart on my way to his shoulder. “Thank you.”
He frames my face and presses our foreheads together. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this, Isla.”
“By this, you mean a fake relationship that’s becoming unexpectedly fun ?”
I feel him smile, but the curve is so full of torment that it doesn’t reach high or remain in place long. “I know you didn’t want to stay in Glace.”
“Trust me, if I wanted to be gone, I’d be gone.”
“Still, I’m sorry for forcing a ring on your finger, I just…” His lashes flutter, revealing a stare that’s as beleaguered as his hair. He seems lost, as though he’s ventured into a territory that he doesn’t govern and from which he cannot find his way back. “I just really wanted to keep you.”
It’s admittedly the first time in my life I don’t bristle at the idea of being kept. What does that say about me?