Chapter 20 #3
A feline smile curved her lips, making me ache to taste her, but I held back, refusing to give in just yet, knowing delay would drive her mad. Then she brushed her parted mouth against mine in that same maddening, teasing way she wielded during a spar, slow and deliberate.
Her tongue flicked out to graze my lower lip, and just like that, she found the chink in my armor.
“Fuck, Sylvi,” I groaned, wanting—needing—more of that wet tongue.
“You don’t play fair.” And it seemed I couldn’t stop talking because I added, “Tell me, is it such a crime that I want to tear the flesh off my bones at the mere thought of you with any male, especially him?”
Her thighs shifted beneath me, her fingers curling into the collar of my tunic, the threads straining beneath her grip as if she was holding me together while all I could do was come undone before her. “It is,” she whispered, “when you’re betrothed to an Unseelie Princess…and I’m still unclaimed.”
Her words should’ve cooled the fire inside me.
Instead, they poured oil over it, stoking the unseelie magic already burning in my veins until it roared with rapacious hunger.
I hated the laws of our kingdom, hated my mother’s decree that barred our union simply because I was a royal fae and Sylvi was not.
Especially when my soul had already whispered what my heart had always known.
My eyes softened over hers, my pulse hammering in my throat like a war drum. “Unclaimed?” I said, “Elskan mín…you’ve been mine since the day you first stepped into my maze.”
Mine… Mine… Mine...
The word thundered through my skull like a starving beast clawing for its prize.
The monster beneath my skin prowled restlessly, demanding I claim her, body and soul, right here, right now.
To show her how deeply she belonged to me, even if it meant ravaging her beneath the stars, with soldiers and attendants mere feet away.
The only thing shielding us from prying eyes was the thin veil of ice I’d conjured, as fragile as my restraint.
But I’d waited nearly my whole godsdamned life for this…for just one kiss.
And I wouldn’t let that monster inside me ruin it—not now, not when she was finally in my arms.
When I took her mouth with mine, it was her pace that I followed. Slow. Soft. Sensual.
A delicious, torturous ache that deepened with every breath until it bloomed into something wilder, something star-born and infinite, the kind of kiss that unmade worlds and rewrote them anew.
Her lips parted on a sigh, and I deepened the kiss with the hunger of everything I’d denied myself, stroking my tongue against hers, tasting her—gods, tasting her.
She moaned into my mouth, and I swallowed the sound like a prayer, letting it imprint itself on my soul.
Her hands tangled in my hair, yanking me closer, our bodies pressing chest to chest, hips aligning as her legs parted just enough to welcome me into her heat. I rocked against her, and her moan deepened, urging me to grind harder, to unleash every feral instinct clawing beneath my skin.
My hand slid beneath her cloak, across the curve of her ribs, searching for the swell of her breast, but I paused. “Do you want me to stop?” I murmured against her lips, my body trembling with so much need, every inch of me ached for her answer.
“Don’t you dare,” she rasped, clutching my shirt like she was drowning, and my breath was her life-giving air.
A growl rumbled deep in my throat as I kissed her again, biting her lower lip just enough to draw a gasp. She arched into me, a breathy cry escaping as my mouth trailed down her jaw, her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, the sweetness of her pulse.
Blasted Solstice. I needed more of her. All of her.
Unable to hold back any longer, I finally cupped her breast through the fabric of her tunic, palming her soft roundness, the pad of my thumb circling the hard peak of her nipple in slow, gentle strokes.
A rumbling groan vibrated in my chest at the feel of her arousal, and it took everything I had to not tear her tunic off and take that nipple between my teeth.
She spread her thighs further apart, and the scent of her desire, gods, that intoxicating scent, shot my mind and body into a tumbling, uncontrollable spiral. “Fucking Hel, Syl,” I breathed hard against her bare neck. “You’re going to make an utter mess of me…”
Before I could fall further into madness, a deathly chill snaked up from the lake, ghosting over my spine and up my neck.
My ears twitched and I lifted my head, instincts flaring, sensing the danger a second before a scream tore through the night, splintering the perfection of this moment.
The adrenaline in my blood heightened my senses, every sound and scent pulling my attention away from the suppleness of Sylvi’s body to the chaos unfolding behind the ice wall cradling us.
Jolted by the scream, Sylvi sat up, her breath still hitched, her pupils dilated, hair in the type of disarray that beckoned me to run my fingers through it, and I couldn’t help the surge of anger that sprung in my veins at having this moment interrupted. “What’s going on?” she asked, rattled.
Reaching for the blade I’d left beside the fur blanket, I shot to my feet. “We’re under attack.”