Page 68 of Demon's Bane

Rhett’s bare from the waist up, wearing only a pair of soft-looking black pants. It puts his broad chest on full display. His tattoos. The silver bars in his nipples. The muscles low on his stomach that I notice are dusted with a bit of coarse black hair now that I have the chance to get a better look at—

He clears his throat, and my face flushes as I realize he caught me staring.

“Enjoy your bath?” I ask, mouth dry.

He nods, dutifully keeping his eyes on my face and not letting them stray to the shirt’s loose neckline or the dangerous territory of its hem at my thigh.

At least one of us has some self-control.

“I thought about just taking the blankets,” I murmur, nodding toward the bundle tucked under his arm as I step forward to meet him at the bedroom’s threshold. “But I was a little worried about what you’d do to punish me for that.”

Rhett’s jaw tightens nearly imperceptibly, but he holds it together as he nods again. “I’m glad. I want nothing more than for you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

“That’s all? Comfortable?”

Another tick in his jaw, the hint of a hard swallow as his throat works to keep in whatever it is he wants to say.

What the hell am I doing?

I should go to bed. Just go to bed. I shouldn’t be standing here, provoking him. I shouldn’t be trying to make him feel what I am. This damned buzzing in my veins. This prickling, needling,somethingthat’s keeping me here.

“I’d also like it if you could get a good night’s sleep,” he says finally, voice lower this time. “Butcomfortablecan be a start.”

“Alright,” I whisper, knowing the smartest choice is to let it end here. “I suppose I should get on that, then.”

He angles his body sideways to give me room to pass. “Goodnight, Joan.”

As we meet in the doorway, Rhett’s hand catches in the fabric at my waist.

I suck in a surprised breath, and he doesn’t seem to be breathing at all as our eyes meet and his hand lingers.

The touch is a question.

Gentle, almost an accident, like if I pulled away and crawled into bed alone, we could pretend it never happened.

Maybe I should.

Despite what we went through today, despite how impossibly attuned to him I feel right now, and despite the way the warm magick wending its way between us threatens to pullme under completely, maybe the answer to that question should be no.

It’s what he’s been trying to do all night, isn’t it? Hold us back, keep me at arm’s length, give us some plausible deniability and a reason not to be too close.

Until he touched me.

But I could still end it. Maybe we’re not ready for this. Maybe there’s still too much we need to figure out.

His life in this realm. My life in mine. The impossible distance between those lives and all the mistrust brewing between our two peoples.

Thisthingpulsing between us. Burning. Pulling. Stretched so taut it can’t possibly hold.

The magick I can’t deny, not when I’m drowning in it, not when it flashes deep in Rhett’s red eyes and steals the breath from my lungs.

So yes, there’s a question in his touch, but its answer feels like fate.

My hands are on him before I’ve even registered I’m moving, tangled into the thick black hair at the nape of his neck. My lips follow, crushed to his for one suspended second before he moves, tightens his grip on me, slants his mouth over mine and demands entry.

I grant it immediately. He drops the blankets into a heap on the floor, and then his hands are on me, too.

One fisted into my hair, the other spanning my lower back, bringing my whole body into contact with his. I groan at the heat of him, the intoxicating aroma of leather and pine, the strength of him against me.