I leaned in, forcing myself into his view. “Don’t pretend you don’t need help when you do. Don’t pretend not to struggle. I know it’s a big change. In a cell one minute and in open air the next.” I exhaled a silent breath. “I’m trying to understand what you’re burying. What it is you don’t want me to see. But you won’t scare me away with it. I’m here. I’mhere.”
Pheolix shifted uncomfortably. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging his bun loose and letting the strands fall. “You have to understand,” he said softly. “This doesn’t feel real. I’m waiting to wake up."
I bit my lip. Then leaned toward him. “We’re not asleep.”
“Yeah?” He watched me inch closer, unsure once more. “How do you know?”
“Because I only have nightmares when I sleep,” I said. “Dreams where I’m being chased or captured. Or tortured.” His mouth thinned. I glancedaway. “I’ve imagined having the chance to ask you for what I wanted a year ago. Imagined it hundreds of times. Never once dreamt it.”
He sighed. “Nothing’s changed. I can’t give you what you want.”
His hand flexed again, and I grabbed it. Squeezed it in my palm. “You must not understand what I want.”
Pheolix opened his mouth to argue. I climbed into his lap. He lifted his hands at first, unsure of whether to touch me, but they wrapped around my waist a moment later. Fire sprang deep in my belly. Electricity hummed in my blood.
“Did you think I came all this way for a bodyguard?” I asked. “I came all this way foryou.”
Rusty hair fell across his eyes as he studied me. I pushed up, a knee on either side of his lap.
“Heiress,” he said, cautious warning drifting under his voice.
My mouth hovered a finger stroke away from his. “Tell me to stop,” I said. “Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me to go back to Calder. Tell me you never want to see me again, and I’ll go.”
His eyes fell to my lips. His mouth parted as he stared, his hands tightening around my waist. “There is nocorda-cruorwith me.”
“I don’t want acordae.”
The ghost of a touch away, dark brows rose at the tone of my voice.
I shook my head, tossing my hair behind my shoulders, the long sable locks suddenly a nuisance. “I want a blackguard ass of a siren.”
57
Selena
The cavern wall disappeared behind Pheolix.
The sigh of the wind, the bite of the cold.
The scent of mud and stone, the taste of mountain wind.
Everything vanished except for him.
Pheolix suddenly overwhelmed my senses. The soap on his skin, the warmth of his body, the taste of his mouth, taunting me from a mere breath away.
“Lie to me and tell me you don’t love me,” I murmured against his lips.
“I don’t love you,” he whispered back.
I leaned back, bracing myself over his shoulders, looking him hard in the eye. “Now tell me the truth.”
Pheolix’s hand snaked around the back of my neck, wrapping the length of my hair into his fist at my nape. “I’ve loved you since the moment my lips touched yours. Ten years ago.”
“Eleven,” I corrected, but the word was a hum inside his mouth. He yanked me into him, prying my lips apart with his, his kiss a hot lash against my tongue. He released his hold just to slip his fingers through my hair, gripping the sides of my face as though I might flee.
I pressed into him. Thighs, hips, chest. My open jaw ground deeply into his, and he shuddered against the rough demand of it. Fire ignited, flames blazing across me, burying me under the heat and smoke of his hands and mouth. Fire was a thing to fear. But here in the cave, fire's hair was red,its mouth was decadent, and all I wanted was to burrow myself into its warmth until it burned me alive, searing its kiss into my flesh and bone.
Grit mangled his voice as he moaned softly. I pushed my weight onto my knees, leaning further into him. My hips revolved slowly in his lap, testing all the firm curves that lay across his thighs, teasing more of that moan from him. That thick, heady scent of desire swept through cognition, though I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine.
