Page 49

Under the table, my hand clenched into a fist.

“Andros?” Garrick asked, brow furrowing slightly. "Did you hear me?"

I cleared my throat. Forced a casual nod.

“Yes,” I said evenly. “We'll discuss the tax details once we've evaluated the supply lines.”

Across the table, Roran watched me carefully, leaning back into his chair with narrowed eyes and a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. As though he sensed my distraction but hadn't quite placed its cause.

“Are you with us, Alpha?” he asked lazily, the silver piercing glinting sharply. “Or is something… distracting you?”

I held his gaze steadily, refusing to betray even the slightest reaction to the sweet, torturous pressure Lexa wove slowly through the bond.

“I'm exactly where I need to be,” I replied calmly, raising my goblet in a composed toast. “Let's continue.”

My mind pushed Lexa back, but I should have known better. The moment I did it, she struck like lightning. The air around me blurred, the conversation at the table slipping into meaningless noise as a white-hot flare of sensation burst behind my eyes.

Lexa.

Naked.

In my bed.

Her skin was flushed with heat, gleaming under the memory of candlelight. She stood at the edge of the mattress, then sank onto it slowly, deliberately, her hands gliding over her body in lazy, sensual arcs. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders, strands sticking to her damp skin. Her thighs parted just enough to tease me with a glimpse of the curve between them. Then she moaned—my name—a sound that echoed like thunder through the bond.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Lexa,”I growled through theconnection, but it was too late. The image was already seared into my mind, her body spread across my sheets like an offering.

I watched—helpless, furious—as her back arched in a slow, luxurious stretch, her knees bending, legs opening in open invitation. Her fingers ghosted over her stomach, then down between her thighs, movements unhurried and practised, every motion meant to provoke. Her lips parted in a soft, silent moan, and her eyes—dark and heavy-lidded—burned with satisfaction, not for herself but forme. She knew I was watching. She wanted me to watch. To suffer.

I curled my fingers into fists beneath the table until I felt blood rise under my nails. The sting barely registered, not when the bond pulsed again—harder this time, a deep throb that pulled me closer, dragged me further into her heat, her pleasure, hergame.

She didn’t speak with words at first. Just sensations, flashes of touch and heat and sound. But then her voice purred low and sultry into the bond.

“You’d love this,”she whispered. “If you were here right now, I’d let you take me from behind—your hands gripping my hips, guiding every thrust, every snap of your body into mine.”

My jaw locked so hard it ached. I pressed my palms flat against the wood of the table, needing something solid to ground myself before I shattered into a thousand pieces in front of the high council. I could feel my arousal building, thick and heavy, my entire body reacting to her like it was mine to control. Like she was already mine.

Her voice wrapped around me like velvet soaked in heat. “I’d let you knot me,”she breathed, “feel your teeth sink into my neck while you fill me. Over and over. Until I can't say anything but your name.”

I nearly groaned aloud. My muscles were coiled tight, straining with the effort to not react, to not storm out of theroom and hunt her down and make good on every single thing she dared to whisper to me. The weight of my position held me in place. Just barely.

She laughed softly in my mind, dark, sultry, victorious. And gods help me, I was going to make her pay for every damn second of it.

Across from me, Alek and Maera were still speaking. Something about winter shipments, the price of salt and steel, but their words became a dull hum, muffled by the blood roaring in my ears. I was only half aware of the tension creeping into my posture, of Garrick’s eyes narrowing slightly beside me, of the slight frown pulling at Maera’s brow as she glanced between the two of us.

Then another wave hit.

Lexa’s mind slipped deeper into mine with all the grace of a dagger sliding through silk. The bond lit up like a live wire, overloaded with sensation that didn’t belong to me but that I felt everywhere. Her pleasure crawled beneath my skin, hers and mine blurred together, stolen, shared,weaponized.

Another image struck like a blade: her fingers pumping, slick with want, her back arching in my sheets, her mind wide open so I could feel every shudder, every gasp, every breathless curse.

I stood abruptly, the chair screeching across the stone. Maera flinched. Alek’s brow furrowed.

“Andros?” Garrick asked quietly, already reading the tension in my face.

“Stop this.” My voice thundered through the bond.

But she only moaned louder inside my mind, a wicked, silken sound crafted for me, poisoned with vengeance.