38
“What did you say?” I exclaimed so fiercely that my usually melodious voice sounded like a terrifying growl.
Mistress Yrrek flinched and quickly stepped back, pure fear sailing full sail in her wide eyes.
It was only when I felt Amlach’s fingers wrap around my forearm that I realized I had nearly lunged at the woman.
“Will you excuse us for a moment?” He smiled from ear to ear and dragged me away.
As we zigzagged through the guests, dancers, and fire eaters, it felt like his hand was so red-hot it could sever my arm. At the hall’s rear, Amlach passed through a curtain of scarlet and gold drapes dangling between two columns, and I angrily wriggled free from his grasp.
“Don’t tell me you’re really thinking about accepting her proposal,” I snapped.
He faced away from me, so stiff he resembled a statue. “Why shouldn’t I?”
I grabbed him by the elbow and made him turn around.
“Did you notice how Roxior’s attitude shifted when she approached?
” I continued in a pressing tone, keeping my voice as low as possible and glancing around to ensure no prying ears were nearby.
“It’s clear that this woman is responsible for the loss of his lover. ”
“She is,” he confirmed.
I frowned, speechless.
Amlach rubbed one hand over his face and grimaced in annoyance. “Do you think I spent the afternoon beating off because of what didn’t happen in that tub?”
I blushed, brusquely averting my angry gaze.
He sighed, growing more irritated. “Roxior has summoned me to his study to explain his new plan.” He took a half step closer to me to speak more softly.
“By becoming that woman’s favorite, I could find out all her dirty secrets, all the shady things she is involved in.
And Roxior will finally be able to officially accuse her in order to bring her before the Council of Rubra and demand her death sentence at the hands of an executioner or the desert. ”
I grew circumspect. “I thought he aimed to humiliate those who had killed his beloved during the Games, robbing them of glory and wealth . . .”
“It seems our performance hasn’t impressed just Mistress Yrrek.
And now Roxior wants to see her executed.
” He moved even closer, so near that my skirt touched his tunic.
“And the sooner I provide him with all the evidence he needs, the sooner we can get home.” He took my chin with two fingers, lifting my face to search my eyes. “Don’t you understand?”
I grasped his wrist and yanked his hand away. “I don’t understand how you can be willing to prostitute yourself for this,” I hissed.
He shrugged. “She’s a very beautiful woman. It won’t be that hard to sleep with her.”
I made a disgusted face. “How can you say such a thing?”
“I’m a man, Nauriel,” he snapped between his teeth. “I have needs that you undoubtedly don’t require me to explain. And besides, it’s been far too long since I’ve touched a woman.”
“You touched me earlier,” I said point-blank.
His pine-green irises seemed to burst into flames. “Not enough.” He stared at my lips, and then his gaze, darkened by desire, traveled over my body. “Not the way I’d like to.”
I felt as if I was breathing pure fire instead of oxygen. “Amlach—”
“You think I want to screw her?” he growled in my face. “Or any other female who looks at me like I might be the fuck of the century?”
“That’s enough,” I said, livid, then turned to head back where we came from.
Suddenly, Amlach seized me by my arms and slammed me against the column so hard that a few of my hairpins came loose as I hit my head.
“I want you,” Amlach declared with both passion and anger. So much anger. “And I want you to stop resisting me and admit that you feel the same way about me.”
Terribly shocked, I didn’t push him away when he cupped my cheek with his hand, so big that for a moment the ridiculous idea that he could crush my skull in his palms crossed my mind.
Amlach pressed his thumb beneath my chin to tilt my face upward, leaning down until he brushed the tip of my nose with his.
“Tell me that tonight I will finally have you. Tell me you’ll let me do whatever I want to you.
” He slid his other hand from my breast down my ribs and along my side until he reached my buttock, which he squeezed so hard that I gasped.
“That you’ll let me fuck you as I imagined from the first moment. ”
I scowled, troubled by how his crude language affected me. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I commanded, pushing my hands against his abdomen in an effort to shove him away.
Amlach moved his hand behind my neck and ran his fingers through my hair, giving it a sudden tug that made me moan with a mix of surprise and excitement.
“I’ll talk to you however I want,” he growled, his mouth brushing mine with each syllable. He yanked my hair again to tilt my head back even further. “The way you want me to.”
I glowered at him and arched my fingers on his taut abs, as if I had claws instead of nails and could sink them into his skin to make him flinch away from me.
To pull him closer.
To mark him.
He grinned cruelly against my lips. “You want me to say all those words that make your lovely, pointy ears turn red.”
He stopped touching my butt cheek and moved to my thigh to look for the split in the drapes of my skirt. When he found it, I grabbed a fistful of his tunic—perhaps to prepare to shove him.
Perhaps to order him to take me away. To our room.
Amlach’s hand slid between my thighs, prompting me to instinctively part them a little. He ran his fingers over my throbbing sex, spreading my arousal fluid over the hot and hairless skin, widening its lips, increasing the pressure until I gasped.
“And you want me to do it,” Amlach continued in a voice so persuasive and erotic that I trembled, “while I’m here.”
He penetrated me with two fingers, without any delicacy, sucking my moan in his mouth as if it were his only source of nourishment.
I clenched his wrist, digging my fingernails into his skin until he hissed through his teeth, which scraped lightly against mine.
I attempted to wriggle away, but he yanked my hair, leaving me unable to move.
“Here,” he said. “With my hand. With my mouth. With my cock.”
He pulled his fingers out and pushed them inside me again with such force that the base of his palm slammed against my pubis, causing me to let out a guttural groan that was lost on his lips.
“So deep that I’ll take your breath away. So slowly that I’ll make you feel like you’re going crazy. So hard that I’ll make you scream as you’ve never screamed before.”
He flexed his fingers until he touched a point that made me moan loudly. My vagina tightened so intensely that I eagerly inhaled Amlach’s grunt of pleasure.
“Tell me you’ll be mine, Nauriel,” he said in a tone as persuasive as commanding, moving his hand at such a fast rhythm that I felt my fluids cover his palm and begin to drip down the inside of my thighs, our bodies swinging against each other as if he were actually possessing me. “ All mine.”
Those words snapped me back to reality. A reality where, after three thousand years of solitude, I had accepted that no mate was destined for me. A reality where I would never belong to another; where I would never be truly loved.
A reality where there was no future for us together.
Sadness spread within me like a frozen stream, extinguishing the flames of desire that had enveloped me. Amlach instantly realized that my body no longer responded to his skilled touch and stopped, his eyes drowning in mine with such intensity that it pained my heart.
Broken, I said, “I’m an elf, Amlach.”
And I could never be his.
He understood it. Slowly, he released my hair, pulling his fingers out of my sex with a final caress that made me sigh with melancholy.
“And I’m just a human,” he replied softly, his voice soaked with anger and disappointment.
I leaned my head against the column and shut my eyes, attempting to hold back a painful grimace. To fight the impulse to rail against the Spirits for making me meet Amlach.
The impulse to scream because he was not like me.
He was not meant for me.
I breathed deeply to regain control of myself and opened my eyes once more, instantly frowning. Amlach exuded a dark, predatory aura and was gazing at me with the ferocious intensity of a ravenous wolf, as if he wished to rip me apart.
He kept his eyes locked on mine as he lifted the two fingers, covered with my arousal, to his lips.
Stunned yet incredibly thrilled by that shameless gesture, I watched him suck and lick them until I had the impression that his tongue was on my sensitive, still wet sex.
Until I was about to order him to kneel and lift my skirt.
Just as I envisioned running my fingers through his hair while he ate me with his mouth, Amlach smiled with satisfaction and abruptly turned away, pulling me along against my will.