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Let him?I was practically begging for it. “Anything,” I answered, the word catching on a moan as he curled his fingers.

Carefully, he lowered me back onto the table until I was lying flat. I watched as he removed my pants, caught the nearly feral glimmer in his eyes as he appraised my body, stripped bare before him.

He bent to kiss me. My mouth first, where our tongues tangled and our teeth clashed, and then he made his way down my body, licking and suckling, his hands sliding along my sides as he lowered himself to one knee. His lips brushed my hip bone, his tongue caressed my inner thigh, and then Lucais grinned up at me wickedly as he spread my legs with his hands…

And buried his face between them.

We both moaned at the contact, and the vibrations of his sent an almost intolerable wave of pleasure skating through me. It was so intense that it bordered on pain.

His mouth was a welcome warmth as his tongue lapped up my arousal, sliding inside of me in long, languid motions and then circling my clit. After a few moments, he placed his hands on my hips, threw my legs over his shoulders, and tugged me further down the table as if he couldn’t get enough, couldn’t get close enough.

All I could see was the top of his head, black curls against dark skin against my body, and his large, strong hands gripping my thighs as his arms wrapped around from underneath and held me up to his face. The chair towered over us behind him—the same dark wood as the table beneath me—and I averted my eyes, idly blinking up at the rafters on the ceiling high above us as a destructive wave of pleasure built and built, threatening to utterly destroy me.

He heard my whimper and groaned in reply, a delicious sound that pushed me to the crest, and he rose to his feet, taking me with him, his face crushed against me. I shuddered, trying to hold back a scream as I came against his mouth so hard that I saw stars in my mind.

When I opened my eyes, I found him watching me, an atrociously self-satisfied smile in his own. And that look alone sent me over the edge again—or for longer, I wasn’t sure.

Lucais waited until I had stopped writhing and twitching before he softly lowered me back to the table, where the cold wood bit at my bare skin. My legs were shaking violently, and he smoothed his hands over them, tracing circles with his thumbs.

“You are the most perfect, exquisite thing,” he told me, and then a dazed look passed over his eyes. “Fuck. I’m never going to be able to sit here and want to eat anything else again.” He frowned as if he had only just realised that he had pinned me down on the dining table. I must have paled or ceased shaking, because his expression softened. “Aura?”

Wewereon the dining table, and neither of us cared.

It wasn’t supposed to be that easy—to want him in such a way, a man I barely knew. I could’ve sworn the stars were laughing in my face.

“If we do this,” I whispered, glancing at the very obvious and borderline intimidating size of his erection, “will it help? The bond, the scent—”

“Oh, for the High Mother’s sake, Aura. No.” Lucais’s eyes lightened, drilling into mine with sudden clarity. “You’re not doing this forthat—” He broke off and muttered a filthy curse, shaking his head as he took his hands off me and ran them through his hair. “There is nothing you can do about this. I’m sorry if we made you believe otherwise.”

The heat fizzled out across my skin, and I gaped at him, momentarily lost for words. I reached for my shirt, pulling it closed around me, but the buttons were magically done up before my shaking fingers could find them. And then my pants were back on.

“I’m not—I’m notwhoringmyself out to the High King to try to save Faerie from another war,” I stammered, and I wasamazed at how hard my voice was when the rest of my body felt like jelly.

His eyes narrowed. “No, that’s not what I meant. The timing is just…” He trailed off with a sigh.

“Time and place, right?” I snapped, scrambling to climb down from the table, fumbling for the sense of control that had been teased, taken, and thrown back at me. “You couldn’t have thought about that sooner?”

I recognised the look on his face.

Not quite embarrassment or regret, but—guilt. As if paying our debt to the stars went against some kind of moral instinct. As if we shouldn’t have acknowledged the debt in the first place.

I certainly shouldn’t have. God, I didn’t have to sleep with him to try to save his life.

I still hadn’t decided if it was worth saving, for crying out loud.

The High King could lie, and he might still turn a blind eye to the brutal torture of prisoners. For all I knew, that’s why the Oracle predicted it would happen to him in the future. Revenge! Did he have enemies? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know if he had any friends. I had questions—lots and lots of good, reasonable questions—that I hadn’t bothered to ask before I jumped into his lap and started purring beneath his touch like a cat. A sudden and intense wave of heat engulfed me from my head down to my toes, and I felt sick.

Mere moments before, I had been completely naked in front of him and had allowed him to possess my body so completely that it qualified as a religious experience, but he hadn’t removed a single item of his own clothing. Hadn’t shown me even a strip of his own skin.

I’d let my guard down, and the High King’s inner circle had started taking me apart piece by piece.

“Auralie,” Lucais called as I turned on my heels and stormed towards the doors. Tears burned behind my eyes. “Auralie, wait.”

Lucais was not my High King, so I ignored him and slammed the door behind me as I left the room and started my indignant march down the corridor.

I made it all of five steps.

“I see you finally decided to listen to me,” a dark voice purred from behind me.