Chapter 7 The Winter Ball #4
Xander’s jaw tensed, his eyes narrowing at her as he struggled to subdue the urges inside of him to reach for her, grab her, touch her.
There were all sorts of things he wanted to do to her, so many depraved, devastating things.
Whether it was lust or something more, the pull between them had never felt so strong as it did in this moment.
“Very mature,” he spoke through gritted teeth. “At least I am not the one lighting up a whole ballroom! A ballroom full of people who are aware and mostly terrified of the tales of Daemons, might I add.”
Adriana screamed in anger, throwing her hands in the air. With her movements, the lake began to rise up and overflow onto the decking.
“Stop getting angry with me! Your anger only makes me angrier, your presence makes me angrier, the way you make me feel makes me furious. I hate you!”
“You hate me?” he laughed, donning the pompous persona he knew she was so used to seeing from him. “You did not seem to hate me saving you in there. You did not seem to hate my hands on you.”
At his mocking tone, she lost it. A burst of water shot up from the middle of the lake, the wind howled louder and louder, the ground itself began to tremble. And the air…
The air hummed with the unmistakable sounds of electricity. Xander’s arrogant smirk was wiped from his face.
He had seen Striga lose her temper on many occasions, had been on the receiving end of her tantrums that led to her setting many things on fire.
But this, this was different. Adriana wasn’t directing anything at him or even herself.
Her anger, her frustration, her desire—she was taking it all out on the world.
“Yes, I hate you, Alexander Duran!” she yelled.
Her eyes seemed to light up with the same lightning that danced around her fingertips. Xander called her name, begged her to calm down, but she didn’t listen. Even he couldn’t hear his own voice over the roar of her magic.
“I hate everything about you! Your cocky confidence, your sarcastic smile, your voice that you clearly love the sound of. I hate you, I hate the way you make me feel!”
She obviously hadn’t noticed he had been speaking to her, calling her name as she’d listed off all the ways she despised him, nor had she noticed he had closed the distance between them. Until his lips came crashing down on hers, silencing her fury.
He kissed her with everything he’d ever felt and was yet to feel. He kissed her with his anger, his pain, his sadness. He kissed her with his lust, his craving, his passion, his power. And he knew she could taste it all.
His hands gripped the sides of her face as his fingers entangled into her hair that had fallen out of its updo. She didn’t move, didn’t kiss him back, and as Xander pulled away, his heart ceased to beat when he realised what he’d done.
Her skin seemed to burn through the leather of his gloves, but he felt unable to let go.
If she wanted to kill him for touching her without permission, he’d gladly accept his fate.
But then, as the heat within her body rose again, he realised her powers had begun to dull, and seemed to fuel something else entirely as she reached for his collar and pulled him back to her lips.
She fisted her hands in his dark hair, pulling at the curly strands in a deliciously painful way as she pushed her body up into his.
He held her waist in a harsh grip with one hand while the other reached down her back, drifting lower until he cupped her backside, pushing her further into his hardness.
It was not all too dissimilar from the way that man had touched her before, and Xander knew it was his own possessive way of ridding Adriana of the memory of that man’s disgusting hands and replacing them with his own.
No one would touch her like that again, he decided. No one. He didn’t understand it, wasn’t sure that he wanted to, but through all the mess of lust and power and desire and craving, he knew one thing to be true. Adriana was his. Undoubtedly. Whether she knew it or not.
She belonged to him, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to let go. The thought of her ever leaving him scared him, even angered him, so much so that he couldn’t hold back the growl that tore its way out of his chest.
Adriana stilled at the sound, and Xander wrenched himself away from her. He watched with wild eyes as her fingers tenderly touched her swollen lips, her hair falling in waves around her face as the wind died to a soft breeze.
Running a hand over his face, he felt the familiar ache in his gums, a sign that he needed to feed. But he knew he wasn’t hungry, not for blood at least. With a final look at her, he marched off the decking and back towards the manor, leaving Adriana alone in the cold.
As he reached the stone steps leading up to the manor entrance, he turned his head towards her, not quite meeting her eye, and whispered, “I am sorry.”
Not waiting to hear if she would respond, he ran into the house and up the stairs. The only sound he heard was the soft gasp that left her lips as she beheld the faint glow in her fingertips, the glow that he’d noticed had appeared the moment she decided to kiss him back.