Chapter Fifteen #2
“Soli,” he growls. Then his face hardens, and before I can think of what to say next, he leaps down from his horse and pulls me from mine, so I’m standing close to him—too close to him, his hands gripping my arms. “If you only knew, you brilliant, brave, beautiful, thoroughly vexing woman, that I would do anything in my power—kill any enemy, or even die myself—to keep you safe.”
“If you think—” I blink. “I … You would?”
He groans and bends his head to rest his forehead on mine.
“My entire life has been about self-control, yet in less than a fortnight, you’ve hammered cracks in my willpower.
I … yearn for you. Why? There are the obvious reasons,” he says almost to himself.
“But not as obvious as the thousand reasons I shouldn’t do this—not that I care about any of them. ”
“Reasons? Shouldn’t do … what?”
“This,” he says, the word at once heavy and featherlight.
And then he kisses me.
I freeze, shock and ice and heat swirling through me at the first touch of his lips. This can’t be happening. I let myself dream of it, knowing it would never become reality, that he’d never kiss me when it wasn’t part of our disguise, but here it is, he’s kissing me, he’s …
“Soli.” His voice is husky with laughter. “Stop thinking so hard.”
“I get that a lot,” I admit, and then I gather up all the courage it took to touch the amulet and put my hands on his cheeks. “Kiss me again, and I’ll try.”
His beautiful eyes flash with a fire that’s only for me.
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him.
Then he captures my mouth with his own in a kiss that’s a wicked delight of contradictions.
His body is hard against mine, his arms steel bands around my waist. But his lips are soft, teasing, coaxing me to open my mouth.
I hear a strange sound and realize it’s me—I’m making the sound, a tiny moan—and he groans in response and wraps a hand around my braid, pulling my head back until my neck is bared to him and the delicious heat of his mouth.
“Tell me to stop,” he rasps, raising his head, pulling me closer to him in defiance of his own request. “Tell me this is madness.”
My laughter is high and wild. “You must have mistaken me for someone else, Your Highness, if you think I’ll be the one to stop this.”
I throw my arms around his neck and cling to him, pulling myself into the curve of his body so tightly a breath wouldn’t fit between us.
He called me beautiful, brave, and brilliant; I add bold to the list and kiss him back, hoping against hope he doesn’t change his mind, doesn’t remember I’m nothing but a servant, doesn’t think about how pale and sad and bony I look and …
“You’re doing it again. Enough thinking.
This is only about feeling. We should stop, though.
I know we should stop, but … once more. Just kiss me once more,” he murmurs, and then his mouth is on mine, lighting fires in my skin and sending liquid heat sizzling through me to pool between my thighs.
He traces the edge of my ear with one finger, and I’m lost.
How can an ear be so sensitive? How can mere kisses ignite a wildfire inside me?
How can purple eyes hold so much heat?
Feeling.
Oh, I know it’s about feeling. My entire being is a whirling cascade of sensation and desire and need. If only … If only …
If only you were worthy of him.
With the impact of a bucketful of icy water, the vicious voice that lives in my brain starts reciting its litany of all the ways I’m not good enough for this kiss, for this man, for anything.
All the ways I’m nobody.
I fiercely tell that voice to shut up and raise my face to the man I’ve dreamed about all these years without even knowing it, without realizing or even hoping that a stolen moment of happiness like this could ever be mine.
It doesn’t last long, of course. How could it? He’s a prince, and I’m … me.
“Soli.” I hear the withdrawal in his voice and shake my head.
“No. Not yet,” I whisper, too proud to beg but brave enough to protest. “Please, let’s not go back to reality just yet.”
“The others will be here soon. And I can’t … I can’t do this,” he says, his hands clenching at his side as he steps back. “I feel split in two. Part of me wants to drag you into those trees and fuck you senseless. Fuck you until you scream my name.”
“Kaelen!” I whisper his name instead of screaming it. My knees suddenly don’t want to hold me up, and the lightning strike of pure sensual desire that burns through me at his crude words leaves me gasping.
His face is stone. “But the rest of me knows I can’t touch you like this, when my honor demands I remind you I’m a prince without a kingdom, and I have nothing to offer you. And when … other things stand between us.”
For the first time in my life, I want to punch someone in the head.
Instead, I laugh.
“It’s a kiss, Kaelen, not a proposal. And if you have nothing, then consider my plight. I have nothing. I am nobody. If anyone has no right to this moment, it’s me.”
“Stop it. Now,” he snarls. “You’re brave when the world has beaten you down for so long. Kind, when you’ve seen only cruelty. Never think of yourself as less than anyone else.”
The sincerity beneath his harshness is more than I can discount. I’m good at detecting lies, and there are none here. He steps back and bows, so stiffly that the twin flames of shame and passion spiraling through me bank to embers.
“Kaelen, I …” But I don’t know what to say. I can’t find any graceful words to make him understand. My reading was mostly history, biography, and action-packed fiction. I had no use for poetry or fine literature.
I want to tell him that his honor and goodness shine through his every word and deed.
I want to tell him that his kisses will live forever in my most secret dreams.
I can’t say any of that, so I just shake my head. “I know,” I offer. “It’s fine.”
“No,” he says, his voice edged in steel. “It’s not fine. None of this is fi ne. If only—”
But we hear the horses behind us and realize the wagon is about to come around the bend.
It isn’t fine. But now I may never learn what he meant to say after if only.
Suddenly, I can’t bear the thought of Elianna staring at me with her eyes that see so much. Not yet. Not until after I take a moment for myself.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, grabbing up Cloud’s reins from where they trail on the ground and tossing them to the prince. Then I run off into the stand of trees, hoping they’ll think I’m tending to personal issues.
Not fighting back tears.
I ignore Kaelen’s voice calling after me and run a hundred paces into the forest that borders this stretch of road before slowing to catch my breath and calm down.
Then I lean against the trunk of an enormous tree, close my eyes, and take deep breaths, in and out, in and out, in and out, until my heart stops racing.
But when I open my eyes, my hard-earned calm deserts me.
Because I’m not alone.
Six snarling wolves crouch in a half circle around me.
And they look hungry.