She gasps as I gather her in my arms. Her hands slide up my neck, fisting in my hair, loosening a groan in my throat.
An inch from her lips, I feel it. A rip across my lands, my own connection to it as ruler catching like a frayed thread. I curse, not because of the pain, but because of the timing.
Worry. “What is it?”
“There’s been a breach in the scar,” I say. I look down at her, committing her to memory.
If the dreks kill me today, at least I’ve told her. At least she knows even a fraction of my feelings for her. At least I know she wanted me to kiss her, this once.
That’s enough, I think.
Then I portal away.
I fight them all night. My muscles go slack. My skin burns. But all I think about, through it all, are green eyes, watching me. Parted lips.
I consider the flash of emotion I felt from her, when I almost kissed her. It wasn’t just desire ... it was something deeper. Something unfamiliar.
The dreks take out an entire legion. I watch them take one of my best men into the scar, carrying him between them. I hear his screams, sense his pain.
Eventually I turn the creatures to dust, but it took too long to draw the amount of power to do it.
It takes me too long to close the scar again. Took too long to notice that it was breached in the first place.
I was distracted.
For hundreds of years, I was known as a heartless warrior. Perhaps because of my unwavering focus, my willingness to go to any extreme to win.
The moment I saw her, both of those things changed.
I’m distracted even now, back in my quarters, overcome with exhaustion. It takes me until my shirt is nearly off my body to sense her.
Her.
Isla. The reason my thoughts no longer follow a steady path.
I turn slowly. Tentatively.
She’s sitting on my bed, highlighted by the dim light of dawn escaping my curtains.
Isla blinks. Stands up quickly. As if she hadn’t meant to be sitting on my sheets. As if she herself was surprised she had ended up there at all. As if it wasn’t exactly where she had meant to position herself.
But then, I can sense everything she’s feeling.
My memories of the battle dissolve. I could be back on the battlefield, facing swarms of scaled dreks, and my focus would be solely on her, on her red dress that is sheer in some places. Its slit high up her thigh. Silk clinging to her body as if wet. Like her clothes the day I found her in my bathtub.
I prowl closer.
She raises her head. She says, “I—I just wanted to make sure you were fine.” She knows now what I faced, after healing my wounds. She knows I was at the scar.
I raise my eyebrows, conveying that I can feel she’s here for far less innocent reasons. I might tease her more if I didn’t know her, if I didn’t think it might keep her from coming back.
Instead, I motion toward my bare torso and say, “I’m fine.”
She swallows. “I can see that.” Her gaze slips down my chest. She straightens. Opens her mouth to let out a retort, or threat, or excuse.
Before she gets the words out, though, her gaze drops lower.
Her eyes go so wide I’d have laughed if I weren’t throbbing in discomfort.
