Chapter 31 #2
The sleek metal that had been holding her hair clattered to the floor, forgotten. Her eyes were locked on his scrutiny of her in the mirror. His fingers dipped through her hair, brushing against her exposed spine.
Her skin shot to attention, betraying her completely.
She forced words out, anything to distract her own thoughts from how he watched her with locked interest.
“Do you think he’ll be mad I’m not wearing the emerald?” she asked, thankful her voice remained steady despite the fact that Reeve’s fingers now trailed the fabric at the base of her spine.
He stood to his full height, watching his fingers glide between her skin and the dark beads lining the low-cut back. “Of course he will.”
Maeve turned towards him, slow and steady, but as she turned, his fingers were already on the move. He took the back of her neck, palming her head in his broad hand.
“Remember that tonight is a game. And that our goal is to incite a jealous possession.” His eyes slid down her chest, where the intricate and beautiful beadwork shaped her waist. “Wearing my colors is so much more. . . provocative.”
Maeve swallowed. “And how far are you willing to go to provoke him?”
Reeve clicked his tongue. “We,” he corrected. “How far are we willing to go, you mean.”
Maeve hesitated slightly before responding, her eyes cast down, studying the dress. “I will do whatever it takes to save Mal.”
Reeve’s brows lifted, his hand still splayed at the back of her head. “Anything?”
Maeve’s eyes narrowed reproachfully.
“So if I,” he began, ignoring her dagger-like gaze and sliding his free hand over her stomach, touching where his eyes kept lingering, “touch you in front of him. . . like this. . .you won’t shoot me with lightning?”
Maeve watched his tattooed fingers lift up across the fabric of her gown, as though he was drawing the very air she breathed through her lungs. “No,” she answered, eyes cast down. “It’s part of the game.”
Reeve hummed. His fingers still on the move, now above the dress, they slid between her exposed cleavage and prickled between her collarbones. “And if I pressed my lips here?” he asked, his voice darker.
The rise and fall of her chest became heavy. Still, she would not meet his eyes. In pitiful and pathetic defiance, because whatever reason she told herself she did not stop him wasn’t enough, she closed her eyes.
“No,” she surrendered another answer of compliance.
His fingers continued, his attention tracking every chill, every minute flutter of her pulse, as his fingers grazed across her skin. They tucked beneath her jaw, craning her neck back and deepening her head into his palm. Her eyes opened, but she was still a coward. She cast her gaze to the side.
With his pinky and ring finger still hooked beneath her jaw, his thumb trailed over her lips. “What about here?”
Maeve’s eyes closed once more as his thumb pulled her bottom lip down.
When she didn’t answer, he spoke. “Because I am determined to bring him to his knees with my performance. And I wouldn’t want you to be surprised by my commitment to my role.”
Maeve scoffed and opened her eyes at the ceiling.
“Is this your way of telling me not to get attached to your attention? A little reminder, it isn’t real and you are just pretending?”
His grip tightened. “Would you prefer I not pretend?”
She nearly laughed and met his gaze at last. Her tongue was prepared to mock him until his parted lips and heavy-lidded eyes settled over her, halting her words.
There was nothing else in the world designed so perfectly as his face.
Not even the gown. His violet fire-filled eyes harbored an edge of sin, of wickedness that caused a burning deep in her belly.
Because he was a paradox.
He was a rogue, a six-foot something God of power, with a face designed to corrupt. But the Aterna Magic pumping through him offered her something entirely different. Something pure. Something of promises that could be kept. Something that ensured pain was a foreign idea. Something that. . .
Reeve hummed, the sound pulling her closer to him, to that something she refused to name, to give further weight to.
His fingers moved from her lips and jaw, gliding up her cheek as he softly carded them through her hair. His voice mirrored that sinful look in his eyes. “If you look at me like that, he’ll come unglued at once.”
His fingers repeated the motion with a tenderness that contradicted the way his tongue briefly slipped forward and coated his bottom lip. The way his breathing sang to her in warning.
His top lip pulled wide, revealing his pointed canines.
She hated those perfect teeth. She hated how they painted him as the apex predator he was.
She hated that they were pearly white. She hated that she wondered what they’d feel like pressed into her skin, just where her neck bled into her shoulder, if they could bite through skin and tear her apart the way she deserved—
Reeve’s satisfaction only blossomed. “My, my,” he purred. “You’re giving me so many ideas for this evening.”
This evening.
A game.
As she always was to him: a game.
Maeve huffed, blinking and breaking the trance he held over her. She brought her arm between them, forcing him away. He didn’t fight her and let his hold on her fall. She moved away from him, breathing fully at last.
“You really do enjoy getting under my skin,” she muttered.
“It’s so difficult now, with someone else crawling through it.”
Her shoulders lowered. She turned back towards him, refusing to be ashamed of the darkened veins running across her body. He offered her a weak smile and a look that expressed a half-apology.
“How about this?” she said, chewing the inside of her lip. “The first one to make that disgusting green possession in his eyes fade wins.”
Reeve’s smile returned. “And what will I get when I win, kitten?”
Maeve shook her head, ignoring the term she’d told him many times not to call her. “If you win,” she corrected. “If you win, you can choose your prize. And if I win, I can choose mine.”
Reeve’s eyes sparkled. “No exceptions?”
Maeve shook her head, already plotting her own prize he’d be forced to give her. “None.”
Reeve tipped his head back and laughed. It was disarming, filled with pure joy. “Oh, perfect!” When his eyes landed on her, that divine face, that paradox, that challenge in his eyes, made her brain fire off a multitude of signals.
All of them meant trouble.