30
Guilt kept me awake long after curfew, and had me creeping upstairs although I wasn’t certain there wouldn’t be a priestess patrolling the fortress.
As soon as I closed his door, Voran pressed me against it.
I gasped his name.
His chest met my back, and his hand my stomach. The other locked the door as he murmured, “I thought I understood what hatred was.” My robes were gathered as his hand glided higher up my stomach. “Until today.”
“I didn’t want to leave like that,” I whispered.
His hum was more of a throaty purr as that hand reached my breast. Over my robes, he squeezed it. “I hate watching him talk to you.” His other hand collected my hair—coiled it around his fingers. “Hate watching him look at you.”
My brows scrunched. “Meront?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Hate watching your sweet lips curl at the sight of him.” A tug at my hair tilted my head for his lips to lay on the curve of my shoulder.
“Hate watching him watch you eat.” He kissed my neck.
“Hate watching him watch you laugh.” Another kiss.
“Hate watching him watch you walk.” His teeth grazed my skin.
“Hate watching him watch you fuss with your hands and nails and all of this soft hair.”
Another tug. This one rough.
My hands met the door, slid down it as my blood both chilled and heated.
“But what I really, really fucking hate is that I’m not the only one watching you.” He bit me—hard enough to draw blood.
I flinched.
He held me still as he soothed the sting by licking the blood.
“Voran.” I spoke gently. “He’s more interested in his wounded pride than me.”
Releasing me abruptly, he said, “Is that what you think?”
I turned and leaned against the door. “It’s what I know.” Carefully, I said, “As I’ve known him for a long time.”
I’d been incredibly wrong to think that might appease him.
His features twisted briefly before that mask of apathy returned. But the storm brewing beneath wasn’t so easily contained. Pushing a hand into his unbound hair, he held the thick strands and slid his teeth across his lower lip.
Standing there in his half-unraveled evening robes, muscles tight and agleam from his bath, with those stone-carved features fracturing…
He didn’t look real. He looked like a statue of barely restrained violence and torment.
A god of wolves.
But the fear I felt came from not knowing what to do. About him. This.
Us.
He released a harsh breath, and his hair. It fell over his chest in straight yet tangled steel lines. I wanted to tame it. To tame him. To calm him by eradicating the feelings he didn’t want to show but so clearly had.
It was then that I was forced to acknowledge that we’d taken this further than tasting something forbidden and chasing the rush that came with it. We’d gone too far to safely turn back.
Yet the crushing weight in my chest demanded more.
Voran tracked each step I took. When I stood before him, his hands curled at his sides. I placed one of mine on his bare chest. His skin seemed to warm more beneath my palm.
I cupped his cheek and glossed my thumb over the bladed edge. His lashes lowered. His brows pulled together as if he were in pain. He put his hand on mine at his cheek and held it there. Pressed tight while murmuring something I couldn’t understand.
But my heart swelled so much it hurt to inhale.
I pushed up onto my toes and kissed him.
A sharp breath was his only sign of surprise.
Too many thoughts and feelings warred within me. So I kissed him. Softly, reverently, I tried to tell him what I couldn’t say. That I didn’t want this, yet I couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.
That I was no longer scared of him, but scared of how I would feel when this reached its inevitable end.
I kissed him until I sensed a different tension from him, then I whispered my mouth across his and murmured, “Good night, Prince.”
Before I could step back, he captured my face. “Stay.”
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
“We can read.”
My brows jumped. “Read?”
“Yes,” he hissed, hands tightening at my cheeks.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then let me prove it to you.”
I stifled a smile and feigned a sigh. “Fine.”
He let me pull free of his hold, and I settled on the edge of his bed with the book of fables. An owl hooted as I opened it and traced the strands of my hair.
When I looked up, I found Voran watching me. Some of that tension lingered, harshening the severity of his face. His shoulders stood rigid. Then he blinked, as if leaving a trance. A moment later, the bed dipped beneath his weight.
But he didn’t sit next to me. He moved up the mattress to sit against the headboard. “There,” he said. “Some space you don’t actually want.”
I withheld a laugh, careful to keep my gaze from sticking to his muscular, hair-dusted legs.
“You won’t like the next story.”
“I’ve probably already heard it,” I whispered. “Should I read to you first?”
“Whatever you want, myishla.”
Halfway through the second page, I stopped reading. “What does that mean?” I asked. “Myishla.” When I looked over at him, he was smirking.
Behind me, his feet swayed, ankles crossed. “You’ll find out one day.” Lifting a hand from his chest, he gestured aimlessly. “Maybe from one of these ancient books.”
“There are thousands of books here.”
He twined a thick section of his hair around his finger. “Then you’ll be too busy to humor the golden prince should I leave this sanctuary before you.”
Leaving was what most of us had wanted since we’d set foot upon the beach. Now, the thought of it, remembering that this would end…
The book slid from my lap, forgotten as I turned toward him. “I think you know I’m not interested in Meront.”
“Meront,” he repeated, as if tasting something sour. His eyes gleamed in the dim. That finger still coiled his hair. His robes had gaped even more at his chest, revealing sparse charcoal hairs and some tattooed scars.
I stared at them as I asked, “How did you get all of those scars?”
“Do they interest you?”
My lips wriggled. “Yes.”
He released his hair. His gaze brightened, lupine in its study of my face.
“When a direwolf shifts for the first time, they are hunted until the most powerful wolves have all left their mark. The marks prove acceptance. Loyalty. Better than a crown to an alpha, they are filled with ink to ensure they remain and are worn with honor.”
“That’s…” I blinked. “Horrific.”
“It’s a rite of passage. Tradition.”
Picking up the book, I frowned at it—lost to dreadful imaginings that led me to ask, “Is it true you first shifted when you were very young?”
“Kiss me, and I’ll tell you.”
I gave him a bland look.
He huffed. “Yes.”
“How young?”
“Kiss first.”
Feigning annoyance, I found the page I’d been reading and said, “You haven’t even read to me yet.”
“Pass me the book.”
I didn’t argue and handed it over. “This doesn’t mean I’m kissing you.”
“You will.” His fingers grazed mine before latching onto the leather cover. “Just need to make you more comfortable by reading about butchered babes first.”
As he leaned back against the headboard, our eyes met. Useless rebuttals piled upon my drying tongue. I looked down at my hands.
Pages turned in the quiet. “How about one kiss per page read?”
I should have said no. But I knew that playing games and dancing around this was now futile.
So I served him my best stony look. “I will kiss you for every two pages read.”
If Voran was shocked, he didn’t let it show. His eyes immediately dropped to the book he’d opened at his chest, and he began to read.
His coarse voice, lowered to keep from waking the ward in the next room, rasped over sentences thickened by his accent. He took his time. Perhaps to make his improvement known. Or perhaps to increase the anticipation quickening each beat of my heart.
He stumbled once on the word lengthy, and I smiled before saying it softly. He repeated it, then lifted his eyes.
A gleam grew within. He set the book down, open upon his abdomen. His lips curled. As did his forefinger—beckoning me to him. It was as if that finger stroked something inside me awake. Something that birthed hunger and confidence.
I placed my hands on either side of his crossed legs, then crawled up them. Though my robes likely gaped, his eyes didn’t stray from mine. My own legs straddled his thighs by the time I loomed over him.
His lashes bobbed, and his head tilted back. A smug smile tugged at his parting lips. “Reward me, broshklin.”
“You did read that quite well.”
“Should someone other than me so much as make your pretty mouth quiver, I will soon be able to write you a story using their spinal cord and blood.”
My stomach both turned and swooped.
But though he smirked, there was no amusement in his eyes.
With a nervous laugh, I said, “That won’t ever be necessary.”
“I decide that.”
“Voran,” I admonished.
“My patience nears its limit.”
Right. A kiss.
I braced a hand on his chest and waited for his reaction. There was none. His eyes remained trained on my face. His chest rose evenly beneath my splayed fingers.
But when I used my other hand to lift his chin while lowering my head, he swallowed harshly. I smiled against the corner of his mouth. As I hovered my lips above his, our eyes struggled to maintain contact.
Our breath mingled. My finger caressed his skin, roughened from the hair attempting to break through.
Then I put my lips upon his.
He inhaled sharply, and only when I eased away did he exhale. It rumbled like a warning. Before I could inch back down his legs, my hips were seized.
“Stay,” he said, then released me to pick up the book. “Or I don’t read.”
I sat on his thighs, just above his knees. Muscle clenched beneath me.
While he read, I took advantage of our proximity—and his concentration. I perused the bladed clefts of his cheeks, the tiny scar disrupting the near-perfect shape of his right brow, and discovered he hadn’t one freckle upon his face.
When the book met his lap, I finally realized he’d ceased reading.