Chapter 21 #2
And underneath that, twisting through it, the other truth: he belongs to someone else. Not in the human sense, not in a dating-app exclusivity sense, but in a bloodline, destiny, ancient-curse way that should make him untouchable to me for reasons far more serious than pride.
So why is the air between us already crackling like something lit a fuse?
Valentin’s gaze lands on me and holds. No greeting or smile. Just silvered focus moving over my face, my throat, my mouth, the same way he looked at me last night after the kiss, like he’s cataloguing evidence and trying not to act on it.
The sexual tension in the room fattens into a third presence, heavy and ripe and frankly rude.
I drag my attention away first because I enjoy breathing.
Just in time to see Aaron wink out of existence.
I jerk so hard I nearly reach for a blade. One second he’s beside me, all dry menace and sarcastic dietary metaphors, and the next there’s only empty air.
‘What the—’ I snap, spinning. ‘He can teleport? Then why the long trek up here?’
Valentin’s expression does not change. ‘Because to teleport he would have needed to touch you.’
A half-tick goes by before the penny drops. ‘And you don’t want him touching me?’ The words leave my mouth before I can sand down the edges. And the instant they do, something hot and treacherous flares in my chest.
I shouldn’t feel anything about that except annoyance.
I absolutely do not.
But his fury reaches me from across the room before he speaks, invisible and unmistakable, raising the hairs on my arms.
‘No, little hunter,’ he says, each word controlled so tightly it sounds dangerous, ‘I do not.’
My pulse jumps hard enough to annoy me. ‘You do realise I don’t belong to you, right?’
For a sliver of a heartbeat, he is still by the windows.
Then he is in front of me. Another fraction, and I’m propelled back into the wall with a startled breath, shoulders hitting smooth stone, his body caging mine without crushing me. One forearm braces beside my head, the other hand flattening near my hip.
Apparently this is his favourite place to pin women.
My brain should be ashamed that I like it.
His face is inches from mine. Silver burning and jaw clenched. ‘How many questions do you require this morning?’ he asks, voice low and lethal.
I open my mouth to demand what the fuck he’s talking about, to inform him in clear language that ambushing me against architecture before caffeine is a war crime.
Then I feel it.
Him.
Oh.
My.
Gods.
He’s hard.
Insanely hard, his cock a steel rod pressed against my belly through layers of clothing, relentless and impossible to misread. Every coherent thought evacuates my head in a screaming rush.
Someone needs to remind him of his fated mate.
Someone who definitely does not want to break her virginity all over the shaft digging unrelentingly into her stomach.
Someone who—
‘Answer me, little hunter,’ he says, the restraint in his voice somehow worse than wildness. ‘Or I will take the kiss regardless.’
My gaze drops, traitorous, to that devilishly sinful mouth. His jaw clenches and releases as if he is barely holding himself in place.
‘Five,’ I blurt, because apparently my brain has selected a random number as coping strategy.
His eyes narrow.
I drag in a breath and force words past my pulse.
‘Five questions. You owe me five if you’re going to pin me to walls before breakfast.’
My voice comes out huskier than I want. I hate that he hears it. Hate more that his eyes flash in immediate response.
Then, because I have learned at least one thing this week and would like to live long enough to regret all of it, I add, ‘And no fangs.’
Valentin
The words are barely out of her mouth before I move.
No thought, no discipline honed through centuries of war and blood-feuds. Only instinct I reserve for threats and hunger.
And what infuriates me most is that I cannot tell which one she is.
It is profoundly inconvenient how much I crave this sharp-tongued scrap of a human.
Worse, how deep the craving has gone. This is no longer merely wanting the taste of her mouth, though that alone has become an obsession I resent and revisit in equal measure.
Last night I attempted sleep with intent, not because I required rest, but because I wanted the possibility of finding her in reverie again.
Wanted that strange dream-space where she slips through my mind like contraband light.
She did not come.
The dark yielded fragments and frustration, and I woke in a temper so black that one wrong word from the Twelve might have earned someone a shattered wall and a lesson in administrative correction.
On the wrong side of the coffin, as she would no doubt phrase it.
I prowled the Tower awaiting her return and discovered yet another irritation.
I had to force my thoughts back to Lyra Hannigan.
To the proper gravity. The correct emotional alignment. The sacred necessity of finding the woman woven into my blood.
And it was difficult.
Because Eira Cross has begun to embed herself where she has no right to be. Not merely in my thoughts, but in the reflexes of my body, the cadence of my temper, the marrow-deep place where instinct and need become indistinguishable.
She is in the air of my rooms after she leaves them. In the silence after she stops speaking and in the pause before decisions that should have nothing to do with her and yet are shaped by whether she will approve, resist, flee or provoke.
She needs to be rooted out. That is the sane conclusion.
Then my mouth closes over hers, and sanity fractures.
Her lips part on a breath that sounds like surprise and surrender, and the taste of her detonates through me. Every argument I built around restraint collapses into heat.
Netheris fires and starlit skies, she is warm and sharp and aggressively alive. Her mouth meets mine boldly, resisting for one pointed fraction before she opens and lets me sweep inside for a first, frantic taste.
That resistance.
That taunt.
Even now, she refuses to be taken without taking in return.
I should resent it. Instead, I am undone.
My hand slides to the side of her neck, then over the curve of her jaw, thumb catching the corner of her mouth as I angle her face and deepen the kiss. She makes a small, breathless sound that goes through me like a blade drawn slowly from a sheath.
Her scent blooms at once.
Fear. Adrenaline. The bright metallic edge of nerves. And threaded through it now, unmistakable, the darkening sweetness of arousal.
The knowledge hits with brutal clarity.
My fangs pulse against my gums.
Hunger, desire and the need to fuck rise together in my kind more often than mortals would survive understanding, but with her the overlap is becoming a problem of unprecedented severity.
In this moment, I have never wanted to fuck a woman as hard and as desperately as I want to fuck Eira Cross.
I snarl under my breath and force myself under control.
No fangs, she insisted.
As if she sensed how close the edge truly is.
I stroke her tongue with mine, wet and warm, and struggle to keep the promise.
Barely.
She arches into me when I kiss her harder, and my free hand, acting on appetite before permission, finds her breast through the layers between us. The soft, dangerous fullness fits my palm with a perfection that makes my control stutter.
I squeeze. Torment one hot peak. The sound she makes this time is broken, half protest, half need, her fingers clutching at my shirt as if she is torn between pushing me away and pulling me closer.
The latter wins.
I lift my mouth from hers only long enough to breathe, though breathing is courtesy now, not necessity. She follows, mouth rising, chasing mine with a hunger she would deny if I named it.
The sight nearly unmans me.
The little hunter, all barbed wit and defiance, opening for me as if she has forgotten every argument she arrived with.
A thought returns, the one that haunted me through the night.
Perhaps this is the way through. Excess. Indulgence. Completion.
Take her to my suite. Strip this antagonism down to truth. Fuck the defiance and confusion and snark out of both of us until the compulsion burns itself clean.
Give her the full experience of what she keeps baiting and backing away from.
Perhaps then she will stop running because there will be no mystery left to tempt her.
Or… perhaps she will run harder because I have fed the part of her that already answers me.
And if she lets me bite her—
The thought is so forceful, my fangs ache outright.
I break the kiss and grit my teeth against it.
She looks up at once, flushed and breathing hard, eyes bright and dazed and furious at herself for being dazed.
She notices the change in me and her gaze flicks to my mouth, then my eyes, and back again.
‘No fangs,’ she whispers, less snark now, more plea and definite warning.
I drag in a measured breath I do not need and force the hunger down another inch.
‘No fangs,’ I growl, and the promise costs me.
She exhales, shuddering, and that shudder is its own temptation.
I gather her up before I can reconsider, one arm behind her back, the other beneath her thighs, and blur across the space to the sofa in a streak of motion that would terrify most mortals into screaming.
Eira squeals but the sound is not fear.
It is exhilaration.
She clutches my shoulders, eyes flashing with something wild and alive that makes my mouth curve before I can stop it.
‘You like that, little hunger?’
The name slips out before I can refine it, a private correction to the one I have used until now, and her expression changes at once. Surprise. Heat. Then a glare she snatches into place too late.
‘Don’t get cocky,’ she breathes, and drags me down by the front of my shirt, kissing me before I can answer.
So we are lost again.