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My mouth puckers.

I lower a glower onto my plate. “Is that a command from a master to a slave?”

He snarls down at me, “Words to a whore.”

A strangled cry snares in my throat.

Before I can draw in a calming breath, or steady my soaring rage, before I can even blink, I have spun around—and raised my hand with me.

I strike him, hard.

Thecrackechoes through the kitchens.

Daxeel’s face is turned by the force. The beige tone of his sunkissed cheek darkens into an angry red. The searing leftovers of a slap face me—my handprint.

My chest heaves with the hot rage pulsing through me.

Daxeel is still.

His lashes are low over the searing blue of his eyes. They cast shadows down the caramel tone of his face. But through those shadows, I see the clench of his jaw.

Slowly, he blinks, then turns his chin. He looks down at me.

My breaths steady. The rage rushing through my veins cools into a glacier panic.

Daxeel rolls his jaw as if to release the sting of my strike.

Instinct jolts me. I step back, but before I can think, before I can turn and scramble out of here or utter a word, Daxeel lets his eyes blaze like oceans aflame.

He snatches out for me.

I shove back with a yelp.

But he is faster.

His hands are iron grips at my waist. He hoists me off the ground like I’m little more than some fistfuls of feathers. A squeal escapes me as he turns, and in two blurred steps, throws me onto the kitchen table.

I grunt on landing.

Left out plates and mugs clatter to the stone floor.

Sharp pain spears up my arm to my shoulder—the corner of my elbow thrumming from the impact.

I make to push forward, to hit out at him, but before the last plate can smash on the floor, he’s struck out and hit my legs apart.

He pushes between my thighs in one swift move.

Standing over me, the summer of his eyes fixes on me. Tousled hair grazes over his brow, one tip brushes his lashes—and all I can do is stare for a moment, trapped in my panic.

“You hit like a halfling,” he growls, the corner of his lips daring to twitch into a smirk.

That glacier fear shatters like glass.

Challenge accepted, fucker.

I hike my knee—then shove my boot into his middle.

He staggers back a step, and I am not fool enough to believe my strength pushed him away.