29. Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Kaed lifted the blackness, his eyes murderous as they looked into mine.
“I was researching!” My pulse slammed through me, still reeling from his apparition.
“Your research does not give you the right to not come home, and break my rules.” His voice was so steady, so low, I could have mistaken him for calm. But his calm was lethal—a stillness before a storm.
“Your home. Your rules.” I scoffed. His shirt was closed here in the dark of the foyer.
I buried the heat that threatened to bloom on my cheeks as my body recalled the feel of him against me.
“Yes.” His eyes blazed like blue fire in the dark. “You don’t get to move about this city alone.” Were those rules for my protection or his investment?
“Ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath.
But of course, he caught it and answered with a low growl. Fae male bastard with fae senses.
“You’d be living in a cage now if it wasn’t for me,” I retorted with narrowed eyes.
He glowered at me and moved in closer, heavy strands of hair falling over his eyes.
He leaned over me. His movements were languid.
Less restrained. “Careful, peach,” he whispered, his breath falling across the shell of my ear.
There was a sweetness and something spiced on his breath.
“Or your privileges of freedom will be revoked.” Was he drunk?
My body trembled a little at his words. Or maybe his proximity. I’d been away from him for so many days, I’d forgotten how imposing he could be.
“You wouldn’t.” I tilted my chin up to him, daring to meet his stare.
“I implore you to test me on that. Please.” His hair tickled my temple as he shifted the air around us. His challenge hung between us.
I tried to hold my breath in case I nudged any closer to him. But his scent cascaded right past any sense of preservation I had. The sharp notes of orange and bergamot mingled with the oak and smoky aura of whatever was on his breath. And I drank it in deeply, inhaling him.
A moan distilled from my earlier thoughts tumbled from my lips, and Kaed became a dark statue beside me, muscles tensing and jaw clenched.
There was little light in the room, but his eyes shone. His mouth opened a fraction, and I thought I heard his breath catch.
A loose strand of my hair had fallen across my brow, and Kaed’s finger wound around it. My body awoke with heat and the threat of fire. All it would take was one spark to set me ablaze and burn my resolve to the ground.
His hand traced my temple. And I suddenly forgot how to organise my thoughts.
He leaned in, and my lips parted in needy response.
Kaed’s breath mixed with mine as he came closer.
The quickening of my heart threatened to swallow me in its deafening beat.
His eyes were vast, pupils wide as they pinned mine.
Every time I looked at them, there seemed to be more shades of blue. Shards of turquoise were scattered amongst the crashing waves of azure and cobalt. There were even tiny flecks of cyan that lit them up from within when he focused on something.
My breath tumbled across my lip, and I felt his own breath come to meet mine.
His hand shifted from my temple to rest where my ear lobe kissed my jaw. My pulse fluttered under his touch, and I bit my lip at the conjured memory of his teeth scorching along my skin.
Panic played with the rhythm of my heartbeat again as I realised this was happening.
I might have fleetingly imagined touching those lips, those cheekbones. His hips on mine.
Something thrilled through me like a murmur of a thousand bird wings.
Kaed was responsible for everything I was now living.
He was the reason I was heating and coiling and resisting the urge to rub my thighs together to alleviate the tension building inside me. He was to blame for everything coursing through my blood right now. Anger and need.
I’d never felt something so intense from the mere desire to touch someone. Or have them touch me.
Kaed’s lips were a hair’s breadth from mine, his dark lashes shielded his eyes as they dipped, and I couldn’t read anything in their oceans.
“Is there someone down here?” a sleepy voice called.
A growl grated low in Kaed’s chest, and his hand flexed into a fist as it came away from my jaw.
It felt like a void had opened up and filled with hollow air at the absence of his touch.
He was standing straight now, the picture of decency as he banished the shadows and turned to see Audrie rubbing at her eyes.
Audrie had been mostly back asleep by the time I’d coaxed her to her door.
Kaed walked beside me as we turned the corner to my room. His languid movements had stiffened, and his back rippled with the effort to restrain something in him.
His presence felt like a cord ready to snap. As though he was seconds away from losing control on a leash he held for himself. I could practically hear the leather wrapped around his hand protesting the strain.
I wanted to turn to him to tell him to leave me be. But there was another unyielding draw to turn around to him and have his hands on me again. Even his fingertip had felt intense.
So I didn’t turn at all.
Here in the dark, I could pretend he was no one. I could forget he was the person who had abducted me to this city. I could pretend he was just a beautiful male.
And in the dark, I could admit to myself that I wanted him.
I knew in my bones he was darkly terrifying, not because of the power he wielded. But because of the urges he awoke deep inside me. The way I unnaturally deviated from what I knew I needed to do just to stare a little longer at him.
Kaed reached past me, and I thought he was going to resume the position he’d found himself in in the foyer. Instead, I heard the soft click of the door handle to my room, and he pulled away.
He left me there without so much as a word. Faster than I could see, a breath moved the air, and he had vanished into the hazy shadows of the early morning.
My heart thundered into the emptiness.
Fae male bastard. My insides squirmed in protest at the unanswered tug on them.
Was that all a game to him? A demonstration of his power? His rules? If he knew I craved his body, maybe it was just his way of exerting his power over me. To tread so closely and pull back when I would have given in.
The balance between us was more complex now than it was between captive and captor.
He may have held the power over me by forcing me to be here. But ever since I’d released him from the Cage, there was a sense that I had taken a step towards equal footing with him.
And maybe that bothered him more than he was willing to admit.
I knew the line I was walking was dangerous—mostly for me.
But if I was going to be stuck in this city, there was less and less I could do to convince myself that I didn’t want him. It was an effort to fight that physical desire coiling low inside me.
Removing the context of how I had ended up wrapped up in his world, and the understanding that he had taken me, it was easy to see him as just wickedly attractive, seductive.
I knew I wanted to feel his lips press into mine.
I wanted to feel his hands on me. To feel them grip me and bruise me until my breath came out hot and tangled.
But my conscience, my sense of self-worth, warred with those thoughts.
I should hate him. I should cocoon myself against him and build battlements to defend against him.
But I hadn’t.
I slipped behind the door and sank against it with a sigh. My limbs felt heavy as my thoughts wound up my insides to painful heights.
Unable to still the blood rushing around my body and between my legs, I paced. I had to move. I had to get out of here. I’d been kept in this stone city too long. My limbs ached as much as my core did now. And I needed to feel that wildness around me.
My hands balled into fists, and I kept pacing the small confining room.
There had to be some place I could slip off to. Just to unwind, to work off the heat in my bones. My muscles were snapping to unfurl, coiling into painful knots.
I had to get out, just for a little bit.
But my mind picked at the memories of the last time I had explored the city alone. A cold sweat formed at the nape of my neck at the memory.
This was different. And it would be a different outcome, I vowed. I just needed a little space from this damned palace. And Kaed.
This time would be different.
Damn his rules. I’d be fine.
Wandering thoughts stole my focus, and I found the memory of Kaed swiping that stray strand away far more interesting than anything else.
My feet slapped against the paved streets as I worked my way down the slopes of the city until the cloistering magnolia walls came into view.
The city gates were open for merchants and soldiers, traders and visitors.
Guards didn’t bother checking the patrons who left through the large archway of the barbican.
But as people tried to enter, they were stopped briefly, either handing over papers for inspection or a few coins if they failed to produce anything else.
I had pocketed a few gold adornments from the vanity before I left. I would have to hope that would be enough to buy my way back in.
Kaed had made it sound like there would be a dozen guards at every gate and outpost who would know me and search for me. But these guards looked like they hadn’t slept in two days and were less aware than a hibernating tortoise in its shell.
I pulled my hood up around my head and filed in behind the others passing out of the fortified gates.
A guard followed my steps, kicking up dust as I crossed past him. His look was more bored curiosity than suspicion, though. Like he’d been at his post too long and there was nothing to do but watch the faces blur together.
I turned to see the towering walls behind me. There was something so strange about actually just leaving this city I’d been kept in for too long. And I was just walking straight out of it.
I needed this. If I wasn’t going to get the release my body burned for, I would get the next best thing.