“What is right?” He tilted his head in slow perusal, a quizzical light in his cold stare.
“It starts with consent.” I said this to the High Lord—without clawing his eyes out.
Fingertips brushedthecurveofmyhips, sliding over silk like he owned the body beneath. “You consented to dance.”
I forced my jaw to unclench, my temper ticking up a notch. I’d told him not to touch me like that. Like a lover. Like I’d given him the right he was taking. I cringed internally at even thinking the cliché, but the dizzying speed of his interest was all so sudden. If anyone had told me a week ago the Prince of Everenne would be all over me like dryads in a tree, I would have laughed. Where was all of thiscomingfrom?
“To dance, not for you to fuck me standing up in public.”
“WhenIfuckyou, Aerinne, you won’t be capable of standing.And if you have never beheld the Fae fuck while dancing, you have never beheld Fae truly dance.”
I flinched, mind stuttering. I glimpsed the avid, vulpine stares of the Courts, and found no refuge. His voice slithered past my defenses, embedded in my core and sprouted vines of black and blue roses that twined round and round, caging me in velvet and thorns. Struggling only tightened the trap, increased the pain, pain that infiltrated my lungs. The air in them burned as they constricted.
“Look at me, Aerinne, and not the Courts. You aresafe.” Calm, implacable. An emotionless offer of an anchor I grasped even as I loathed needing him. Unexpectedly wanting him—because there was no doubt, my body was beginning to respond.
“Safe?” Moonlight morphed into a pulsing aura, the beams crystal shards stabbing my temples. I avoided his gaze, breath caught in a vice as my head spun.Toofast, he whirled ustoofast. “How are yousafe?”
Breathe, just breathe. I inhaled lavender air, a wisp of beautiful mocking laughter in the distance.
“Ifyou don't calm, you will hyperventilate.”He retreated behind a voice absent contempt, the sensual teasing from moments before. “You are mine, Aerinne. Nothing can harm you unless I will it. No one will even approach you without leave. Breathe, my halfling.”
So easy for him to say. I hadn’t drawn a true breath since the day on the battlefield he’d forced us to accept a white flag or die. No, even before then, the moment his gaze met mine across the remnants of an ambush as he saved me from imminent death.
Ironically, I owed the male I must kill my life, but he hadn’t called in the debt. Hadn’t even mentioned it.
I focused on the music, on the press of his hands that were now soothing rather than sexual, the scent of him—smoke and blackberries and frost dripping from evergreens in the deep of winter. I focused on breathing deeply, because my therapist said it helped regulate my sympathetic nervous system. Or something like that, which justified her fees.
I focused on the truth that the only thing present that could kill me was him. . .and at the moment, he seemed disinclined to do so.
When the wicked moonbeams retreated, a hand brushed my jaw, gently tilted my head up. No condemnation in his gaze, or pity. Acceptance. A spark of desire beneath the cinderblocks of ice.
“Good girl. Now, tell me something about yourself, Lady Aerinne.”
I shielded my weakness in hostility, infuriated by its flimsy protection. “WhenI was fourteen, I almost died when House Montague tried to assassinate me for the first time.”
“. . .Unfortunate,” he said.
“That Isurvived? I suppose.IfI was you.”
“Oh? Will you try tokillme tonight?”
His calm regard lured me to try my luck—and accept the consequences. But it wasn’t death in his eyes, at least not death that required a grave. Rather the burial of all my reasons to resist.
“Why would Ikillyou in front of your Court? Think of all the blood on my gown.”
“They would cut you down a second before you tried, Aerinne. I wouldn'thaveto lift my finger.”
I wanted to skin the faint amusement from his face and use it to decorate the dart board in my office where his picture was pinned. “Let me go.”
“Why should I?”
He whirled me away from the courtyard and down a labyrinthine walkway of flower strewn stone, his heels crushing petals to release heady perfume in the air.
“Ihaven'tbegun to do what I want with you. We met in battle, you lost. I allowed you to walk away with your life and the lives of those who look to you. To the victor goes the spoils, Aerinne. Did you hope I would fail to collect?”
I clung to him as ancient firs enveloped us in an intimate cocoon.Murmuringvoices reached my ears so we couldn’t have been far from the others but we were. . .alone. The strength and command of his hands reminded me that if this warrior decided to take me down, in any sense, I was toast.
“Can they hear us?” I asked, meaning, ‘will anyone hear me scream’?
