Page 195 of A Vow of Embers

“You only have to ask,” Xander said as he struggled with another knot. “I would kill for you. Lay waste to nations. Let the world burn, if you wanted it.”

There were no words to describe what his declarations did to me. I was ready to tell him to cut through the laces, every bit as impatient for him as he was for me.

I laid down the last card that I had to play. “You kissed Chryseis. And you used Rokh to make sure that I saw.”

Not even that stilled his fingers. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“It was foolish and childish of me, but I did it because I was hurt and angry. So I kissed someone who had always expressed an interest in me, hoping it would make me forget about you. It did not. All I could think about was how much I wished she was you.”

That wasn’t what I had expected him to say.

“I had to create some distance between us, and given your territorial nature, I knew that kissing her would do that,” he added.

“Territorial? You’re just as bad.”

“I am,” he agreed, saying the words against my left ear. He placed a heated kiss against the bottom of my lobe and I felt it in every inch of me. “Because you belong to me and I belong to you.”

I tried to remember myself, why this couldn’t happen. I had to speak. I knew that if I said not to touch me, that he would walk away.

“We can’t,” I finally managed, my voice catching. “I can’t. I have to remain a maiden.”

No matter how badly I wanted things to be different.

And that was when he undid the last knot and the girdle fell to the floor, clanging against the stone. My dress now hung loosely on me, open in the front, sides, and back without the girdle to keep the cloth in place. I was nearly naked in front of him, and a mirror, and I didn’t care.

He undid the sheath on my thigh, letting my sword also fall.

“Why do you deny yourself what you want?” he asked. His hands went to my waist and his fingers dug into my bare flesh. He kissed the back of my neck where it met my shoulders, and it set my blood on fire.

“How do you even know what I want?” My protest was weak, given the wanton way I leaned against him. My mouth said one thing but my body another.

Another smile on my skin. “I know. I know exactly what to do to make you sigh with pleasure. What makes your pulse flutter at your throat. How to make bumps rise on the back of your neck.” He kissed me there as if to prove his point. “What makes you writhe and pant and beg beneath me.”

I knew things, too. How to make his breath catch. What I could do to make his heart thunder in his chest. To make him moan in spite of himself.

“You have only been focused on one particular act without realizing that there are many other things that we could be doing.”

“Like what?” I asked. I had never been so aware of the way my blood pulsed through my veins before.

He moved his hands from my hips and they slowly crept toward my thighs. I gasped when his fingers settled into place, transfixed as I watched him do it in the mirror.

“I could use my fingers,” he said. I let out a surprised moan when he pressed to show me what he meant, fiery darts of pleasure piercing me. “Or my mouth.”

How would he use his mouth? I remembered the dream when he’d been kneeling between my legs, kissing my thighs, and I knew he had been questing for something but I hadn’t known what.

Now I was beginning to understand.

He lifted his hands up over my stomach, using his fingers to climb my ribs like a ladder, and then brushed up along the outside of my breasts. They felt heavy and I ached for his touch. Struck with the strange urge to have him hold me there.

“I have imagined a hundred different ways to bring you to completion and I want to try each and every one.” His voice was demanding and frayed, as if he were barely holding on. “You haven’t even begun to imagine the kind of pleasure I could give you, how good it is going to be between us.”

Then his hands moved up to my shoulders, to where the cloth hung. I tried to think, but all I could hear was the rush of blood in my ears.

He looked at me, waiting. “I have dreamed about this moment for so long.”

Xander had told me once that I would know when he was seducing me, and he was right. I did know.