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He kissed me.

Warm, supple lips moulded to mine, tasting the sound of his name with slow, single-minded motions, coaxing me to let go. Coaxing me to forget about the voices still grumbling in the back of my head, something about allies, something about rumours and reputations. The looks I would get when I returned. The questions, the concerns, Edored’s heated whispers …

Perhaps I stiffened under his touch. Perhaps his demon senses noticed the flare of anxiety that made my heart clench briefly in my chest. He pulled back and cupped his hand around my chin, brushing a gentle thumb over my bottom lip – his eyes so soft, so full of worry, that once again I nearly cried.

Emelin, his lips said.

‘I don’t know how to handle this!’ I burst out. The truth told itself, words I’d never even allowed myself to think before they broke over my tongue in that helpless whisper. ‘I don’t know how to save the world and save myself, too. I don’t know how to make these choices. I just … I just want to sew dresses and read books and love you, not deal with this mess of—’

I know, Em.Even his signs were caresses, gentle and reassuring.Trust me, I’ve felt that weight on your shoulders. I know what it’s like when the world looks at you and sees a weapon rather than a person.

I managed a nod. I didn’t trust myself to get out a single word without bursting into tears.

And you’ll figure it out. Because you’re my prickly little warrior, and you always figure it out in the end.He kissed my forehead, full lips lingering against my skin for one blissful moment before he pulled away.But allow me to help you until that time. Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want.

‘I just …’ My voice cracked. ‘I just want everything to be simple for once.’

His left hand trailed away from my chin and wrapped around my nape instead, leaving shivery goosebumps wherever his fingers passed.He raised his right hand between us.

Then allow me to make things simple for a little while.

Just a little while.

The others would miss me. They would ask their questions. But he was here with me, safely hidden in this sealed room, and the gods knew when I would next be able to exchange as much as a private word with him again.

I slumped against the wall in wordless surrender.

His lips were on mine the next moment, and this time there was no gentle coaxing to his kiss – this was a conqueror’s victory march, a triumph to wipe out every dream of resistance. I opened my mouth to him in a primal reflex. He angled back my head to kiss me deeper in response, tongue and lips claiming the very air I breathed, swallowing my moans, smothering the last sensible thoughts attempting to rise in me. Unrelenting devotion swept over me like a tidal wave – and like an exhausted swimmer who finally ceases fighting the current, I gave in.

He could have me. Every messy, inadequate inch of me.

His shoulders were rock hard when I grabbed for him, nails meeting corded muscle below the soft linen of his shirt. I pressed myself tighter against him, and all my mind registered was his hitching breath as our bodies met – simplicity, perfect and blissful simplicity. He nibbled my bottom lip. I sucked hard on his tongue in reply, and the jolt of his cock against my lower belly set every nerve ending in my body on fire.

Zera would have to forgive me. I’d missed him too fiercely, needed this perfect and self-evident harmony too much to hold back. There was no stopping my shaking hands as they clawed for the buttons of his trousers, desperate to free every addictive inch of him; two, three buttons, and his erection lay heavy in my palm, searing hot and smooth as silk. I pumped my fist along his shaft once, and his ragged breath tightened into what should have been a moan.

That silence … I didn’t want to think about his voice either, not in this place where we should already have found our answers.

But he gave me no time to think or falter under his hands. There was an urgency to his touches, a sense of finality in every twist of his lips. He devoured me like a starving man, the way I’d devoured my winter meals on Cathra – not knowing if I’d get to sate my hunger the next day, or ever again. I rubbed my thumb over the head of his cock, finding the little slit slick already. He snarled against my lips. I half-laughed, half-moaned, and he broke our kiss to bite down sharply on my earlobe – an unmistakable punishment that sent my knees buckling in a haze of red-hot pleasure.

He caught me as I sagged against him, swept me off my feet in one easy motion, and carried me away from the cold wall, towards …

Towards Zera’s altar at the centre of the room.

Dead flowers and half-burned rosewood candles tumbled onto the floor tiles as he shoved me onto that ancient shrine. Through the blur of my arousal, it took me half a heartbeat to comprehend what was happening. Enough time for him to curl his wings around my bare knees and gently nudge them apart, enough time for him to press forward and rub his steel erection against the soaked linen of my underwear.

Only then did I gasp. ‘Creon!’

His grin dazzled with unholy delight, an expression like the thrill of battle.Are you sure you want to object, cactus?

‘It’s an altar! You can’t—’

He thrust his hips forward so that the full length of his cock slid along that most sensitive part of me, as if to prove me wrong. I bit down a moan, clutching the edge of the carved altar for all I was worth – telling myself against my better judgement that surely he was only joking, that surely not even a male who’d once counted himself on the level of gods could sink tothislevel of immorality.

His hand slipped between our bodies, nudging the last fragile barrier of my underlinen aside.

‘You barbarian.’ I breathed a light-headed laugh. ‘You wouldn’t dare. You …’

The warning in his smile suggested I’d be wise not to bet any prizes of sentimental value on that claim. His index finger dipped between my slick lips, sampling the wetness pooling at my entrance, and every muscle in my body clenched around that invasive touch. I moaned – I couldn’t help myself.