Chapter 47
HOT OR COLD
FELíNE PAUSED WITH HER TOE at the threshold of Kal’s bedroom door. She dragged it along the ridge of wood that separated the hallway where she stood from this forbidden space.
Kal’s back was to her. His second form’s broad shoulders curled forward, and Felíne traced the thick line of hackles that followed the curve of his spine. His tail twitched as though feeling her gaze.
She watched, fascinated, as silken midnight fur turned to flesh.
That hackled ridge became a strong line of vertebrae beneath caramel skin.
The tail retreated, leaving behind the most glorious set of glutes Felíne had ever beheld.
She wasn’t even aware glutes could be glorious.
Kal turned his head, gifting her a heart-stuttering profile.
She could have sketched the heavy line of his brow, slightly ridged nose, perfect lips tipped in the ghost of a smile, and stubbled chin from memory.
But what she wanted was to trail her finger along their contours.
My, how deep she floundered in the ocean of this man.
“Kitty,” Kal said, voice low. “What are you doing?”
“I…” What was she doing? Did he find her spying lecherous? Would she have, were their roles reversed? Perhaps it was best not to consider that answer too closely just yet. “I wanted to watch you change.”
A dimple appeared in Kal’s half-turned cheek. Heat flamed her face.
“I mean, not your clothes,” Felíne stammered. “Your form. I just…I wanted to watch you shift.”
Kal stepped into a pair of linen pants, covering that tantalizing backside. He turned to her fully, gold-flecked gaze lingering where she leaned against the door frame, still wrapped in his blanket. “And? Did you find it enlightening?”
She could barely follow a complete trail of thought with him standing there, looking like a mortalized god plucked from the heavens.
His dark hair was rakish, the soft curls unruly.
His gaze heated. The lines of his body were masterfully drawn.
She traced an imaginary finger down the center of his chest, dividing his pectorals.
Slid a phantom touch over the ridges of his intercostals, dipping between each rib before reaching his defined abdomen.
The hip flexors and the valley they created at his tapered waist she’d save for last, just before…
Felíne froze, realizing her attention was fixed on the linen tie that Kal held—the one threaded through the waistband of his pants. Short black hair curled, a light dusting down the center of all that glorious skin.
He was made like a god.
Why couldn’t it have been Kal?
The thought came unbidden. Why couldn’t Kal have been the Primordial Male?
Her godchosen mate. Why couldn’t it have been him?
She should have been ashamed of the blasphemous contemplation.
But just then, with Kal so beautiful before her, his attention so intimately fixed, Felíne couldn’t find the obligation beneath all her longing.
“Felíne?”
Her name in Kal’s deep voice fractured her reverie. What was the question? Enlightening. Right. “Yes,” she replied thickly.
The dark sea in Kal’s bottomless eyes churned as he studied her.
She felt stripped bare, as though he could see past every carefully erected barrier and into the well of who she was.
She’d never felt so exposed. And yet, for the first time in her life, Felíne wasn’t afraid of that exposure.
She’d met the monster that lived beneath the black waters in Kal’s gaze.
Her truths had been revealed and, despite her prior duplicity, had been accepted.
Kal still wanted her. It was written into every gesture, each lingering look.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Kal asked, stepping closer.
So she wasn’t entirely exposed. “I’d rather not say.”
He reached out and fingered a lock of hair framing her face. She must look a mess.
“Still with the secrets, Kitty girl?”
She swallowed. “Ask me something else, and I’ll tell you.”
A small smile tugged up the corners of Kal’s lips. He tilted his head, considering. His finger found her chin. Lifted it gently. “Tell me about your dream.”
Her dream? Her dream, her dream, her dr—Oh, no. Her dream. Last night’s dream. Gods, Kal’s teasing of her in the glen earlier that morning felt like it happened years ago rather than hours.
Felíne’s face was instantly aflame. Not a flush. Not an innocent blush of color. On. Fire.
“I can’t.”
Several gold bands blazed through Kal’s obsidian irises. She had the attention of both man and monster now. “Oh, Kitty. You’re not playing fair.”
He was right. She was a liar and a cheat. And also a coward.
“Shall I guess?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“How about this?” he purred, his grin positively wicked. “I will venture a guess, and you tell me if I’m hot or cold.”
Felíne suddenly wanted to ditch the blanket she clutched too tightly about her. Her feverish skin needed a kiss of cool air.
Or a kiss of something else.
“Three guesses,” she managed. “That’s all you get. Hot or cold.”
Kal’s eyes lit with the challenge. “But if I’m hot, I get to keep guessing.”
A thrill of anticipation zinged through Felíne. She was in so much trouble. A wiser woman would have put a stop to this insanity and bid the incorrigible man goodnight. Clearly, she was an idiot.
“Very well,” she said.
Kal stepped away from her. When he returned, a small knife rested in his easy grip.
“Don’t move,” he commanded. Felíne’s eyes widened, but not in fear.
She was the doe that had wandered willingly into a hungry wolf’s den.
Kal raised the blade and ever so gently traced the tip along the curve of her neck and over the ridge of her shoulder.
She could feel the soft scraping of the dulled blade as it dragged along the outside of the blanket.
Felíne shuddered, and Kal instantly withdrew the length of steel.
He clicked his tongue. “I said, don’t move.
This little game only works if you play by the rules, Kitty. ”
The fiend.
He raised an imperious brow. “Shall we try again?”
Felíne met his gaze, a challenge in her own. She stood frozen, and Kal’s eyes gleamed.
“First question. Did your dream involve a weapon?”
Could a body part be considered a weapon?
Arguably. But she had to maintain some semblance of control over the direction of this game. “Cold.”
Kal smirked and tossed the blade into the corner of the room. Once more, he stepped away before returning. In his hands, a length of silvery cord shimmered in the low light. Silverskin?
“Hands.”
It was her turn to lift a brow. She wasn’t releasing her blanket. Kal knew full well what lay underneath, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of giving up that easily. Felíne snuck one hand out from the folds of her fabric shield.
He grinned wider and slipped the cord of silverskin around her wrist. He tugged, and Felíne gasped as the noose tightened, pulling her forward.
It wasn’t painful; Kal hadn’t pulled hard enough to hurt her.
Yet, an unexpected warmth spread through her at the sensation of cold metal—was silverskin metal?
—nipping into her skin. A new thought popped into Felíne’s mind—one that involved her bound and at Kal’s mercy.
Hadn’t she started as his unwilling victim?
What might it be like to revisit that role within the new parameters of their association?
Kal tugged again, urging Felíne close. She was eye level with the bare skin of his chest. Her palm rested against the left side. She felt the heavy thudding of his heart beneath the skin, scars, muscle, and bone.
“Did you dream of being my captive?”
Last night’s dream, she reminded herself. Not the new one her imagination had just unhelpfully conjured. Felíne pushed against his chest, and Kal conceded a step. “Cold.”
Kal’s eyes narrowed.
Felíne offered her finest attempt at nonchalance. “Last question, Kalevar. Victory lies within my grasp.”
“Was I in your dream?”
Shit. Playtime was over. Felíne’s thin veil of confidence in an imaginary triumph had just been shredded to ribbons. She had no choice. She’d agreed to these terms. Foolishly. “Hot.”
Kal’s answering smile was pure, uninhibited sin.
He stepped forward, and she stepped back.
He advanced, and she retreated. Felíne’s back collided with the wall.
Kal loomed above her. The scent of rainwater lingered on his skin, combining with woodsmoke from the hearth and his masculine spice to make Felíne’s head spin with potential impulsiveness.
All it would take to tip her over the edge was that honeyed bourbon on his breath.
Kal slipped a single finger under the edge of the blanket at her neckline. The moment he made contact with her skin, Felíne’s entire abdomen clenched.
Oh, gods.
That wicked finger of his trailed a line of lightning over her collarbone, the blanket sliding away inch by torturous inch. He snagged the thin strip of fabric of her breastband. It, too, fell victim to his touch. Kal stopped only when an entire naked shoulder had been revealed.
His eyes, those gorgeous, gold-streaked, shadowy orbs, tracked every nuance of her expression.
“Was I touching you?” he asked, voice like smoke.
“You’re touching me now,” she replied, breathless.
“In your dream,” he clarified with the barest hint of amusement.
“I…” Felíne was struggling to maintain a grasp on her faculties. Each tendril of thought scattered like a puff of feathers cast into a sweeping gale. For divine’s sake, it was only a finger. “I can’t remember.”
“That won’t do,” Kal tsked. A second finger joined the first where it lingered on the curve of her shoulder. “I suppose I am forced to remind you.”
Kal lifted his other hand and slipped aside the pitiful layers of fabric until Felíne’s right shoulder matched the left.
Both bare. She clutched the blanket to her chest, her last line of defense.
Kal reached behind her head and pulled the pins from her hair.
Rich, tangled waves fell. Kal spread them over her shoulders.
The thick strands, still damp from the storm, settled over her hot skin like icy ribbons. She shivered.
Kal traced the line of her jaw, the column of her neck. “Any luck with that slippery memory of yours?”
Felíne’s thighs clenched. “Warm.”
“I think we can do better than warm.”
Without warning, Kal tugged the blanket out of her grasp. Air surged into Felíne’s lungs on a sharp inhale. He held the woolen fabric leisurely; her barricade collapsed, defenses overrun. Then, he dropped it.
The rush of cool air over Felíne’s skin was a shock to her senses.
She stood before Kal in nothing more than scraps of ivory linen.
The undergarments clung to her flesh, leaving almost nothing to the imagination.
She was more on display than she’d been in Madame’s with Imogen, wearing that horrifyingly sheer garment.
But this time, she wasn’t an accessory in the room with two other beautiful women. She wasn’t there to watch Sashara perform for a paying customer. This time, the undivided attention of the only person who mattered belonged to Felíne alone.
Kal’s eyes roved over her body. The column of his throat worked on a swallow, and his lips parted—the only indications that perhaps Felíne wasn’t the only one experiencing a nervous flutter.
But Kal wasn’t as easily distracted. His hands resumed their perusal like a cartographer with a whole map of uncharted flesh to explore.
He ran his fingers along the length of her arms, stopping briefly at her fingertips before ascending once more.
Her ribs shuddered when his touch feathered over her sides, the curves of her waist, the soft plane of her abdomen.
His thumbs met in the middle of her stomach, long fingers splayed outward.
Felíne’s chest heaved. Her heart thundered.
Kal’s hands slid upward and cupped the full weight of her breasts over the thin band of fabric that held them. Gooseflesh erupted. Her nipples pebbled instantly. He ran lazy thumbs over them, sending jolts of pleasure straight to her core like bolts of lightning. Felíne’s knees wobbled.
“How about now?” Kal asked, remembering their game. “Still warm?”
“Hot,” Felíne croaked. “Definitely hot.”
Kal’s right hand left her breast and wove into her tangle of hair to cup the back of her neck.
He tugged softly, forcing her head into a tilt until she stared up at him.
His lips found her jaw, left fingers still toying at her breast. “Did you dream of me kissing you?” he asked, warm breath washing over her.
Felíne panted. She didn’t even care. Something sultry and wanton uncoiled itself within her.
She felt wild. Revealed. As though pieces of herself that she’d been forced to keep hidden in darkness had finally been permitted into the light.
And the one seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time was Kal.
She gazed up at him and found only reverence.
Only want. If his eyes had been mirrors, Felíne knew she’d see the same sentiments reflected in her expression.
“Yes,” she said. “I did. And I don’t want to play anymore.”