Page 196 of A Vow of Embers

But that knowledge did not give me any strength to resist.

“Lia. Yield to me,” he said. Those words did unspeakable things to me, making me recall our shared dreams, remembering how much I had wanted him. I swallowed once, twice.

I nodded.

Then his fingers were pushing the cloth from my shoulders and I allowed it. When it dropped to the floor, I instinctively covered myself.

“Do not hide yourself from me,” he pleaded in a husky voice. “I need to see you.”

He tugged lightly on my wrists and I exhaled a shaky breath and then let my hands fall to my sides. I was trembling. I had never let anyone view me this way, and Xander’s face looked as if he might die from the pleasure of doing so.

His voice was ragged, rough, when he spoke. “If you ever fight men while naked again, don’t crouch down. Let them see you and they’ll be so blinded by your beauty that you can kill them all before they’ll realize what’s happening.”

My pulse pounded as his fingers explored my skin. “Does that include you?”

“No, because I’m goddess-blessed. I would be too fast, even though you would have an advantage by impairing me.”

“How would I impair you?”

“Just looking at you like this makes me feel drunk.”

I knew precisely what he meant. His thumbs traced the underside of my breasts. That ache for him to fully touch me returned, and he did so, without being asked. I gasped as I both watched and felt him cup my breasts. A new sensation blossomed in my core, quickly spreading throughout me, throbbing.

“Look at you. You are so beautiful,” he said roughly as he stared at me. “More beautiful than I could have dreamed.”

His fingers brushed against a particularly sensitive part, and when fire lanced through me, I arched against him, moaning. His mouth dropped open slightly, his breathing harsh, and his hands gripped me harder. His gaze was predatory, like he intended to feast on my flesh.

And I would welcome it.

“So passionate, so responsive,” he murmured in between kissing and licking my neck. “And I am the only one who knows.”

I knew I needed to think but the roaring of blood in my ears, my loud, quick heartbeat, made it impossible.

“Look at yourself, Lia,” he commanded me in a tone that both caressed and excited me. “See how bewitching you are. How you are flushed with desire, yearning for my touch.”

I did as he said. I didn’t recognize the woman I saw in the mirror. The one racked with need for him, biting her lip, cheeks pink, eyelids heavy, chest heaving, legs trembling. And I saw myself the way he did.

As a beautiful woman who was wanted.

“I want to coax out all your fire, bring your heat to life,” he said. “So that I can drown in it. Watch you burn and then let you burn me.”

My throat was impossibly tight and my skin felt scorched. I had gone liquid against him, my bones dissipating from the frenzied sensations he made me feel. “I don’t know what to believe. What’s real and what’s not.”

“This is real.” His voice was so intoxicating and full of dark roughness that I lost the ability to stand. When I collapsed against him, he swept me up into his arms. “Very real. I’ll show you.”

Chapter Sixty-Four

I clung to his neck and whispered, “I like when you carry me.”

He looked into my eyes and my breath stopped at what I saw there. “Why do you like it?”

At the moment, it was mostly because I didn’t think I was capable of walking by myself. But there was an emotion there, too. One I found myself admitting. “When you do it, you make me feel safe and protected.”

He paused then, just short of our bed. “You always will be. Safe and protected.”

A strange warmth filled my chest as he laid me down carefully. Never taking his eyes from mine, his fingers went to his belt. He aggressively removed it without breaking eye contact, in a way that promised of things to come, and my stomach felt as if it might float away. Then his tunic was next—he pulled it over his head with one fluid motion and dropped it on the floor.

I tried not to sigh when I saw him. It was like I had forgotten how perfect he was, the way just looking at his body excited me. He was like a well-crafted blade that could accidentally cut me if I wasn’t careful. So strong, so superbly designed.