“Whatever we are,” she breathed.
“Whatever we are,” he agreed, his tone dropping into the problem-solving commander he only shook with her. “There’s a reason Selenia wanted Solan and Leona dead. It’s only a matter of time before someone sets their sights on us.”
“Of course,” she whispered, curling her leg over his hips and pressing her lips against his neck until a low rumble answered.
He sighed into her curls.
She cut whatever argument he was about to make with a kiss before saying, “If I have to go back to playing the doting fiancée of your king tomorrow, I’m going to enjoy every second of you I can tonight.”
Luxuros hardly let her get the last word out before he covered her mouth with his, dancing in the shadows of her before the Moon rose, and they faced whatever came next.
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
“Didn’t take you as the type to sneak out the morning after,” Astra said from the warmth of her bed, tangled in the soft silk of her sheets.
The tattoos along his back stretched as he pulled his shirt over his head, glinting in the dim beams of moonlight cutting through the window behind him. A slow smile unfurled over his lips as he pulled his boots on.
“You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she chuckled, her sheets slipping over her skin as she sat up and searched for her clothes. “Shit, I’ve said that before.”
He tugged on his bootlaces and jolted forward, snagging the silk robe he’d peeled off her last night before she could grab it.
Luxuros held it between them, a lavender flag suspended in the air, his smile darkening with something wicked. Astra lunged as he pulled it away, the movement of her body as she sliced through the speckled light stirring a deep maroon storm within his chest.
“Fine,” she said, shrugging and pulling her hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, all too aware as her arms raised behind her head she offered him a view he couldn’t pry his eyes away from if he wanted to.
He certainly did not want to.
But he needed to, she realized, the ticking of the clock on her nightstand drawing her attention to the hour. Soon, maidens would shake off the night and begin their daily chores. Ameera would be close behind them with a tray of coffee and breakfast.
She closed the distance between them, his arms reflexively reaching behind her to drape the robe over her bare shoulders.
“I wasn’t sneaking out,” he insisted, tracing lines down her arms.
“Sure, Commander,” she whispered, pushing up on her toes to catch the edge of his jaw in her lips. His chest eased at her touch, a feeling he feared would make it impossible to think clearly for the rest of his existence. His hands moved on their own accord, pulling her into him by her hips.
“Does it even matter what I say? You can see the truth, anyway, can’t you? I couldn’t keep it from you a moment longer.” He brushed his fingers against her hair, shivering as her hands found their way beneath the hem of his shirt.
She nodded, shades of rosy pinks and scarlets swirling between them. She could see it, amulet or not, and while much of him remained a mystery, there were two things she was certain of:
1. The gods were even more cruel than she’d believed prior to watching the stars within him contract and implode beneath her
and
2. They were so very fucked.
He didn’t need her intuition to come to the same conclusion.
“I should get back before Ameera comes to wake the mighty Fire Queen.” Luxuros placed a soft kiss on her forehead, the warmth branding her.
“Are you staying in the Lunar Court, then?”
He glanced at the door, an amused frustration rumbling against his throat. He rubbed the outside of her crossed arms, the heat of his fingers once so alarming now a source of comfort.
“If I were a smart man, I’d be on the other side of the universe by now, trying to forget the way you taste. But as you’ve pointed out many, many times, I am not a smart man.”
