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Michal’s eyes flash dangerously as he steps closer, his powerful body crowding mine against the tree once more. “Fine, Célie. As you wish.” Then, with cutting honesty, “I meant what I said before, however. What happened in the tunnels—it cannot happen again. Whether you choose to feed from me or someone else, I will not take another drop of your blood”—those dark eyes flick to my throat—“no matter how tempting you might be.”

I blink at him, startled. “Tempting?”

Though he does not clarify, heat still suffuses my body at the word, and we stare at each other beneath the limbs of the frozen yew tree, this moment between us stretching taut enough to snap. At last, I lift a shoulder as if indifferent, trying not to tremble beneath the weight of his gaze.

“Fine,” I say simply. “You cannot feed from me again.”

“Fine,” he echoes. “Never again.”

And then I kiss him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Irrevocable

The instant our lips touch, his entire body tenses, and a low noise of surprise reverberates in his throat. I feel it all the way to my toes. I feelhim. Pulling him closer, I practically climb up his chest in an effort to better reach his lips, to wind my hands beneath his arms and wrap myself around him. The rational part of my mind screams at me to stop, stop,stop—to release him now and back away slowly, to pretend this never happened—but for once in my life, I do notwantto be rational. I do not want to stop. Just this once, I want to forget about undead creatures and esoteric bonds, and I want to kiss Michal as the entire world falls apart.

In the next second, however, his hands clamp around my wrists again, and he pulls back with painstaking restraint. “Célie, we can’t—”

“Why can’t we?” My voice is a whisper against his lips.

He groans in response. “Because if I kiss you now, I’ll want to kiss you again, and again, and again, and it cannot go beyond that.” His hands still slide from my wrists to my elbows, however, and up farther still. My shoulders. My neck. He lingers upon each as if trying to learn the feel of them, to commit each curve of my body to memory. At last, he cups my jaw and tilts my face, so I must look directly into his black eyes. They burn with indecision, withreluctance, with self-loathing and longing so stark that it takes my breath away.

I stretch upward on my toes, pressing another kiss to his lips—this one just a brush of my own. A shudder runs through his body at the contact. His hands slip into the hair at my nape. “Consider this my favor,” I whisper. “Unless you don’twantto kiss me?”

The indecision in his eyes sharpens instantly, and his fingers tighten, tipping my head back farther. Baring my throat to his predatory gaze. “I want to do more than kiss you.”

“No biting,” I warn him.

He nods and releases my hair with one hand. Sweeping a thumb across my cheek, he presses down slightly in the hollow and watches, transfixed, as my soft flesh yields to his touch. “Tell me what you want, Célie, and I’ll do it.”

“I want you to touch me. I’ve wanted you to touch me since Les Abysses, before even, but I’ve never known how to ask.” The reckless words tumble from my lips without hesitation, but even I can no longer pretend they aren’t true. Pressure burns behind my eyes. Because they’vealwaysbeen true—even when I thought Michal to be ruthless and cruel, I wanted him to touch me. Even when he abducted me, imprisoned me, threatened me with the people I love. It all should’ve mattered somehow, but it never did.

AndGod, I want him to touch me.

“You’re sure?” he asks darkly.

My entire body tightens in preparation. Swallowing hard, I nod, and then—with a spark of daring—I tentatively wrap my lips around his thumb, pulling it into my mouth. He doesn’t recoil this time, not like he did in Les Abysses. Instead he watches my lips upon him for several seconds, his expression hungry, beforeshaking his head and clicking his tongue in reprimand. “Who would’ve known that sharp tongue of yours could be so soft?” Withdrawing his thumb slowly, he drags the moisture across my bottom lip. Now it’s my turn to shudder. Which I do. Violently. “But those aren’t the rules of our game. You defined them quite clearly—you wantmeto touchyou, not the other way around.”

My brows dip in confusion. Because I want to touch him too. I want to touch him very badly. “But what do you—”

“Put your hands on the tree.”

A thrill of shock—of unexpected pleasure—streaks through me at the pure authority in his voice, and gooseflesh erupts down my spine. Still, I’ve never done this before; I don’t know how to move, how to respond to such a command, and though I refuse to acknowledge the creeping flush of my own insecurity, Michal still sees it. His voice gentles as he catches my hands, guiding them to the branch overhead. “Right here,” he says. “Don’t let go.”

“And if I do?”

A sharp grin at the challenge. “I’ll find another way to restrain you.”

It takes every inch of my control not to release the branch afterthat. When I don’t, however, Michal makes an almost feral sound of approval—and then he strikes.

Even with our shared abilities, he moves faster than I can react; between one blink and the next, he catches the back of my knee, hitching my leg around his hip, and pushes me into the trunk of the tree. I gasp at the harsh scrape of bark on my back, at the feel of his heavy body pressed into mine.Envelopingmine. Because Michal—he iseverywhere, all hands and teeth and hard muscle, and when he kisses me, I realize he hasn’t truly done so until thismoment. In each of our brief interactions, he held me like glass, like something precious and fragile and irrevocably breakable, like something he could not bear to lose.

Now he has no such reservations. No such restraint. Now he kisses me like a man starved; he crushes his lips against mine, and when I gasp—overwhelmed by the intensity of it—he devours the sound as if determined to claim every part of me. And perhaps it should frighten me. Perhaps itdoesfrighten me, but my thoughts have caught fire, disintegrated, and I can’t stop hearing the words he spoke, seeing the slight tremble in his hand.No one would be disappointed, Célie.

If my heart could still beat, it would be palpitating. As it cannot, my stomach contracts instead—and someplace lower, hotter, a place I’ve always tried to ignore. It won’t be ignored any longer, however. Not when I shudder in Michal’s arms and he breaks away, dragging his mouth down my chin, my throat, my shoulder.Tasting me, I realize. Every inch of my skin. And I ache to touch him too.

Releasing the tree, I claw at his chest, but he nips my collarbone in warning. “Your hands, Célie,” he murmurs against my skin, his free hand slipping to my leg around his waist. He catches the hem of my gown and inches it up my shin, over my knee, until the satin bunches above our waists. I nearly choke when he steps closer, fitting himself more snugly between my thighs. I still try, however—Itryto lift my hands, to find purchase against the branch overhead.