Page 34

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

Ember

E mber gave the binds a last tug, but they were secure.

Her gaze lingered on Severath’s wrists, crossed over one another above his head and nestled behind his horn.

She hadn’t made many knots with anything thicker than butcher’s twine, so the tangled rope wasn’t very neat, but she had reveled in the warmth of his breath as she leaned close and took her time getting it right.

Severath didn’t seem to mind her breasts hovering inches from his mouth.

The undersides of his forearms were just as muscular as the rest of him.

Dark veins wrapped around each were already straining.

He could probably tear himself free with all that brawn, the way his chest expanded with his next inhale a perilous confirmation, but that thought melted right out of her head because… Severath’s chest .

She’d seen him half naked from afar many times when she peeked out her window during shooting practice and then a little closer when she dallied in the garden inspecting the flowers.

But to have him so exposed and restrained?

Her heart fluttered in her throat, her nipples tightened, and she would probably start drooling if she didn’t busy herself with something .

“Are you…um, comfortable?” That was probably a stupid question—who would want to be tied up?

Ember, of course, was sometimes as capable of naiveté as she was fury.

Severath gave her a rigid nod, but it didn’t suggest irritation. In fact, if she didn’t think she knew better, she might have called him enthusiastic to be tethered and splayed out on the bed.

My bed , she thought, and she couldn’t hide the grin that tickled at her lips. When she hovered a hand over his sternum, that grin only grew as his next inhale rose to meet her fingers.

“You’ll tell me if I do something you don’t like?”

His head tipped, and he smirked as if that were impossible.

Ember took her hand away. “It’s important to me that you will.”

“Yes,” he rasped, and there was a thwack as his tail hit the mattress .

“Oh.” She pouted, kneeling on the edge of the bed. “You’re impatient all of a sudden.”

Severath grunted when she touched him again, just a single finger under his chin. His skin was already hot, and a quick glance down his body told her that grunt was steeped in pleasure.

“Where was this eagerness yesterday when you were ignoring me?” She ran her finger down the length of his neck, trailing behind a swallow to the cleft between his collarbones.

He strained as he lifted his head to watch, his next breath ragged.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” she whispered, leaning closer to his face.

His jaw worked side to side, and then he muttered, “I don’t know.”

Ember hummed as she drew a small circle in the center of his chest and then walked her fingers over one of his pectorals. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Severath blew out a breath and closed his eye as if watching had suddenly become too much.

Her gaze flicked to the binds, still holding as she teased at his nipple.

His brow pinched, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

He seemed to be fighting his enjoyment of things just like when she had climbed up on his back to rub his shoulders.

Emboldened by his nervous agitation and the memory of the massage, she swung a leg over his body and mounted him fully.

When she straddled his waist, he sucked in a sharp breath, eye flying open again.

That blackness was round and wide, but she could see past the momentary surprise to a hunger pacing deep inside.

“You took me into town for the festival, and you let me hold on to you all day,” she said as she laid her other hand on his chest and stroked his skin, fingers gliding over the ridges of each muscle.

“And before that, you came into my bedchamber. Do you remember that night?” Ember pressed herself against his stomach and rolled her hips, leggings an unfair but necessary barrier.

“Of course I remember,” he groaned, body moving beneath her, but there was very little relief. If only she were sitting farther back.

She ran her hands up to his shoulders and then gently raked her fingers back down. “I thought you liked watching me.” When she reached herself, she continued to drag her fingers up her belly and over her breasts.

Severath made an affirmative noise, nostrils flaring.

Ember teased at the neckline of her tunic, watching his mouth fall open in response.

The tongue that had slipped over her own only moments before ran over his bottom lip like he could taste her, and her body shivered in response.

She slid herself backward—not all the way but enough to let him know she could.

“You didn’t visit me again last night, and then you spent all day hiding from me in the bakery. ”

He let out a pathetic noise, and she could barely stand how much she loved it.

“Why, Severath?”

“I was afraid,” he finally admitted, and her fingers halted their wandering. His voice was rough, cracking as he went on, “And I am not afraid of anything.”

Ember swallowed and sat straight. “Except me.”

His eye softened. “Except hurting you.”

The moment with the drayk in the kitchen felt so long ago, but the oddness of being asked if she was injured then struck her once again.

“No one’s ever really been worried about hurting me before,” she whispered, hands resting flat on his stomach.

She felt his next breath, long and slow, and she made herself match it before her own more panicked ones could come.

But her mind overworked anyway, and words fell out of her mouth.

“You don’t have to be, though. I’m strong. I?—”

“You cannot convince me otherwise; Lazerath already tried,” he broke in as his elbows relaxed and his head cocked.

“I’ve been too cold in the past, too lonely and eager to see something that wasn’t there, and I’ve chased demons away.

I’m deeply flawed, impatient, bad-tempered, all things that make me a bad mate.

But it occurs to me now that we may be a good match. ”

Ember squinted down at him. “If you think that’s a compliment?—”

“And I say the wrong things.” He snorted a quick laugh.

“What I mean is that you made a demand of me, and it was simple to follow because I wanted to. Because you are brash, but you’re also kind, and you know exactly when I need either.

You accept me as I am when we are outside these walls and as I am…

here.” He lifted his chin slightly to gesture to his tied-up hands.

“I know you’re strong, Ember, but you do not always have to be that way.

Not for me. I would simply have you as you are. ”

Ember’s fingers curled against him, and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. There was a cracking in her chest, but no embarrassment or anger came flooding out. It was something else, something that made her want to wrap her arms around him and squeeze.

But he was tied up, and she certainly couldn’t waste that, so she fluttered her lashes and gave him a smile drenched in honey. “You would have me?”

“Many times over if I were not so securely fastened.” He tugged at the binds over his head, and the quick movement sent a rush through her that culminated between her legs. But that wasn’t a problem, not when she had every inch of him to herself.

“Oh, would you?” Ember slid herself back until she felt a poke—sooner than she expected—and feigned a gasp.

She reached an arm behind her, and what her hand found made her eyes widen and the smarmy look she’d been hosting fall away.

As she stroked downward, even through the leather of his pants, she could feel something… different.

“Ember,” he groaned through gritted teeth, eye shut, fangs biting into his lower lip.

Her own name said so pleadingly sent a new thrill through her, and she let her hand explore blindly while she watched the delectable struggle crawling over his features.

She finally reached the base, wider there than she expected, but she didn’t think much about the size—it was the texture .

She made a questioning hum and began to turn.

“Wait!” The urgency in Severath’s voice had her letting him go and spinning back to face him. “Laz said, uh—human women aren’t—so males must also be…”

“What?” Ember screwed up her face.

In contrast, Severath set his own steely. “Ember, you may discover that demon males are not created quite the same as human males.”

“Yeah, I know: you have a tail .”

He took a deep breath and stared at her hard.

“Oh, you don’t mean that tail.” She grinned. “Well, I’m not that fond of human males anyway.”

Ember carefully slid herself off Severath’s stomach and crawled between his legs instead, nudging them wider to make room.

He groaned through pursed lips as she gently slapped at his knees and nestled herself between them.

The swell in his pants had her biting her lip, and the feel of tensed muscles when she gripped his thighs had her digging fingertips into the leather.

It had been awful to be attracted to and afraid of the same thing. Ember had wished many times that the urges and thoughts would just go away—the ones that made her crave a man’s touch and the ones that made her repulsed by it, it didn’t matter, she simply wanted to be what she thought was normal.

Demons were not normal, though, and they weren’t men—Severath had made that abundantly clear. And maybe with a little more practice and a lot more rope, she could satisfy the longing that wouldn’t let her go.

She wrapped fingers into the waist of Severath’s pants and peeled the leather downward, the head of his cock peeking out first, deeply red and already glimmering with a bead of wetness at its tip.

Well, that was ordinary enough, maybe a little more pointed than rounded, but when she revealed the rest of his length, she sucked in a breath and held it.