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He stroked over that most sensitive bud so roughly I saw stars, a touch that told me I would not be reading today, that I’d be lucky if I could sit again by dinnertime. If it was a punishment, it felt like a reward. If it was a reward …

Hell, it was a good one.

I closed my eyes as I slumped against the door. His fingers didn’t allow me to catch my breath, working me in swift, heated strokes until I was too far gone to even moan. The weight of his body held me trapped between unyielding wood and the even more unyielding wall of his powerful chest; cheek pressed against the door, wrists caught in the vice of his fingers, I was a powerless prisoner to my desires.

And gods help me, he made me feel it.

His fingers were instruments of blissful torture, skimming and swirling, drawing unbearable circles around that most sensitive spot until I was sure I would shatter. I was nothing but a breathless victim at the mercy of his touch … I was a glass about to burst, and he was the fire heating me to that coveted breaking point.

One last twist of his fingers and I disintegrated, sobbing with relief as my climax tore through me and left me boneless and brainless in his hold.

Still Creon didn’t let go of me, his breath heavy in the hollow of my neck. His hand cupped my sex, cradling me, fingertips brushing over my drenched flesh until the last twitches of my release subsided. Only then did he unlock his fingers from my wrists, turn me around, and pin me like a dazed ragdoll against his chest. A breathtaking, hungry sort of triumph brimmed in his dark eyes.

Time for reading, then?he signed, and it took a long few heartbeats before I’d gathered enough of my senses to recognise it as a challenge.

‘What … what are letters?’ I managed.

A dark chuckle.Got a little distracted, cactus?

I’d forgotten what there even was to be distracted from. The Alliance’s diplomatic unbound mage and Agenor’s perfectly dutiful daughter … they were still shouting at me from some cold and rigid corner of my mind. But Creon was here, holding me, watching me with those night-drenched eyes that knew me better than anyone else in the world, and somehow his gaze seemed to slide straight past them.

I’m not your bloody audience, he’d told me in Etele’s memorial.

I could crumble. I could give in and give up, surrender and be a silly, senseless little girl until the sun rose, and he’d never hold it against me.

I let go. Allowed my heart to take over, or whatever part of me was responsible for this haze of lust smouldering in my limbs, and mumbled, ‘Something just occurred to me.’

Creon lifted an eyebrow, left hand drawing lazy, meandering lines along my spine.

‘If I can’t touch you for ten days …’ I moulded my palm to his chest, unable to suppress a shiver. Ten days of playing a stranger to him.What had ever moved me to agree with that solution? ‘Perhaps we should take an advance on all the times I won’t be able to rip those trousers off you, don’t you think?’

I would have killed to hear the laugh that broke out of him – a light transforming his face from that unnaturally beautiful murderer’s façade into an expression that sparkled with life, wholly his own and so joyful I could cry.Very damn careful now, Em.

I breathed a chuckle and loosened the first button of his shirt, holding his gaze as the look in his eyes became a glass-edged warning. ‘Or else?’

Or else, he signed, the movements of his fingers breathtakingly graceful in the smoky light of the stained glass and the faelights,I might give up on my attempts to appear civilised, and I’ll have no choice but to fuck you so hard you’ll be feeling it for a full ten days at least.

My body drew tight like a clenching fist in some nameless core just below my navel. I moved on to the next button, hands suddenly trembling, and whispered, ‘Wouldn’t that be a shame?’

Horrific.His smile could have driven the holiest of temple virgins to sin.A dreadful fate, for some innocent young lady to be so corrupted that she spends days of travel just thinking about my cock.

‘In my defence,’ I murmured, tearing off a button in my haste to undress him, ‘that’s quite a lot to think about.’

He kissed me.

It was a teasing kiss, a coaxing kiss, a kiss that promised more but kept true satisfaction just out of reach. A warning kiss, perhaps, but if it was, I didn’t heed that warning – because he was not my bloody audience, and I was done making sensible choices, was done holding back and saving the world.Ten days –but not today.

Not tonight.

I buried my hands in his hair, drawing him closer, brushing the edges of his pointed ears until he snarled against my lips. We stumbled against the door, loud enough for incidentally passing alves to hear. For one blessed moment, I didn’t care – didn’t care about anything but his hot mouth on mine and his half-bared body against me and the roaring arousal that sent flurries of sparks through every spot his fingers touched.

I let go of his hair, reached behind his shoulder to find his left wing, and found the taut velvet of the upper edge on my first try.

And then he was no longer kissing but devouring, no longer warning but claiming, that first caress enough to snap the last strings reining in the monster below his skin. His hands were everywhere at once, tearing at my dress, clawing at my bottom, pressing my thighs apart. I stroked his wing again, and he nipped at my bottom lip hard enough to elicit a cry, pain and pleasure mingling in a delicious whirlpool of oblivion.

There were no chores here in this world only the two of us inhabited, no pressing expectations and obligations. Just his nails raking down my spine with exactly the right sting, just his wing under my fingertips, quivering at my every moan. Just his fingers yanking my underwear aside, thrusting into my ready wetness with all the mindless strength I needed.

Ten days.