Page 48 of A Vow of Embers

He deserved to be reminded of it. I wanted to torment him the way he was torturing me.

So I turned over.

Touching my chest to his, putting my face against his throat. I heard his sharp intake of breath.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Won’t this be more believable? Now shh,” I told him. “I can hear them coming. Pretend to sleep.”

I hadn’t heard anything but he didn’t need to know that.

“Turn back—”

He stopped speaking when I slid my left leg in between both of his and he made an inhuman sound. Something burned and heated against my stomach, like a brand.

I had turned over in hopes that it would torture him. But I was only tormenting myself. I now had a small and delirious taste of what it might have been like, no clothing between us, his skin against mine.

I’d once asked Io what happened to acolytes who broke their vows of celibacy and she’d told me the women were buried alive.

This feeling of being pressed against him made me think it might have been worth it. Touching him filled me with an unquenchable desire that was only slightly tinged with the acid of hatred and bitterness.

“If you play with fire, you are begging to get burned,” he said gruffly as his arms tightened, pulling me even closer against him.

“I’ve already been burned.” I intended for the words to be angry, but instead I sounded like I was yearning.

His breathing turned harsher, more labored. He was practically panting, his breath low and hot against my forehead, and tiny bumps rose up on the back of my neck and along my arms in response. I could have tilted my head up but I didn’t. I was afraid to look in his eyes, worried that I would see disgust there, and that would make me feel ridiculous.

Maybe you are just dreaming,I told myself. This didn’t have to be real. He didn’t have to be Prince Alexandros and I didn’t have to be Princess Thalia.

Perhaps, for just one moment, we could be Jason and Lia again. With no lies or manipulations between us.

My body had always wanted his. It still did. No matter how much I despised him, it appeared that fact wouldn’t change. Desperate need for him clawed its way up my throat and I couldn’t stop myself from pressing a soft kiss to the hard line of his neck.

Then his heart ... it gloriously began to beat just as hard and fast as mine. Perhaps I was being unfair, but he was, after all, my husband. Married to me under the eyes of the goddess. I was the only woman in the world who had the right to touch him.

And he was the only man who had the right to touch me.

I could almost hear Demaratus berating me, telling me to never let my enemy get his hands on me. The problem was I very much wanted my enemy’s hands on me.

I wanted all of him on me.

Then, to my delight, he answered my unasked request. His hands began to move, to wander. To do the exploring I had warned him not to do. I wondered if he was aware of it, how he was touching me, or if it was some instinctual reaction.

His left hand went to massage the back of my head. The fingers of his right hand trailed down my spinal column, slowly going over each bump and ridge. It felt like embers were falling from the sky and landing on my skin, burning me in a delicious way. I accidentally sighed with pleasure and slid my hands up to his chest, reveling in the strength beneath my palms.

When he got to the end of my spine, he briefly hesitated, perhaps waiting for me to tell him to stop.

I didn’t.

Then he reached down to cup and caress my bare buttock and I couldn’t help the small moan that escaped my throat when he pulled me even closer to him. Tension pooled low and hot in my gut and I felt feverish, unable to stop shaking.

His entire body was hard against my soft curves. My own body instinctively understood how to blend with his, how to gently cant against him so that his breath would hitch.

As if I had been created just for this.

He put his hand on my hip, the other still on the back of my neck.

“Lia.” My name broke from his lips.