Page 51 of Quicksilver

So much skin. So muchink.His tattoos on his back were interwoven—bold, sweeping lines that seemed to form pathways and tell stories. I wasn't about to lie to myself; I wanted to know about every single one of them—what they meant and when he'd got them. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking, though. I had things I needed to take care of.

A spike of urgency rose up inside me, giving me the courage I needed to act. I took a deep breath and braced myself. “You know…maybe if I looked at the pendant? Held it in my hands? If there was another element bonded with it when it was fired, I might be able to feel what it was.”

This was a dangerous game. If it worked, I'd be able to go home. If it didn't, I'd have a furious Kingfisher on my hands, and I'd probably be imprisoned in my rooms until I died of old age. Fisher looked back at me, his narrowed his eyes assessing me. Gods, he was a sight to behold. Every line of him was art. With his full mouth, and the faint shadow of stubble marking his jaw, his fascinating eyes, and all of his midnight-black hair, it was hard not to look at him andache.I had grown up in a pit of misery, where people died more often than they lived. I hadn't seen many beautiful things in my short life. But, of all the beautiful things Ihadseen, Fisher was the most beautiful of all.

It would have been wrong to think of the men I'd encountered back in Zilvaren in that way. Some of them had been attractive. Some of them had even been hot enough to make my toes curl. But Fisher was the epitome of everything that was strong, and male, and powerful. He was so muchmorethan anything I'd experienced before. Hewasbeautiful. Looking at him made me feel like I couldn't catch my breath.

“If you want it, come here and touch it,” he rumbled.

Holy. Fucking.Gods.

Blood rushed to my cheeks, staining them the color of crimson, and need, and shame. Kingfisher's pupils narrowed to pinpricks. He didn't have a single taunting word for me this time. His lips parted, his gaze boring into me as if he were watching, waiting to see what I'd do.

“Or you could just take it off?” I suggested, laughing nervously. “You let me wear it a whole ten days while I was recovering, didn't you? What's a couple of minutes?”

“Ren had me trapped in a room with three-foot-thick walls, locked behind an iron door that whole time,” he said simply.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.Oh.I'm not much fun to be around without it. Even for a couple of minutes.”

I hadn't realized he'd suffered so much while I'd worn the pendant. I knew he'd needed it badly by the time he'd gotten it back, but I thought his second relic—the ring he wore—had served in the chain's absence.

I nodded, taking a hesitant step forward. “All right then.” I tried to sound businesslike, but I certainly didn't feel it. “I'll touch it while you're wearing it.”

Kingfisher's expression gave nothing away. As I approached, he straightened. I thought for a moment that he was moving away from me, but he wasn't. He grabbed a stool from beneath the workbench and sat down on it, positioning himself so that he was facing me.

So little space between us now.

He spread his legs, the hard, interested light in his eyes daring me to step between them so that I could close the gap. My heart skipped and tripped all over the place as I took that step, accepting his silent challenge. He was so godsdamnedbig. His body hummed with energy; the closer I got, the more I could feel it rolling off him. Like heat. Like smoke. Like power itself. Fisher rested his tattooed hands on top of his thighs, his bright greeneyes following my every move as I reached up and touched the fine silver chain.

He sat, inhumanly still. He didn't breathe. Didn't even twitch. The heat of his skin scorched my fingertips, sending a bolt of electricity snapping through me as I hooked the long chain beneath my fingers and slid them down his chest, over that snarling wolf's head tattoo, until I reached the solid weight of the pendant.

It was rectangular in shape, about an inch long, and lighter than I remembered. When he'd first looped it around my neck back in the Hall of Mirrors, it had felt like an anvil hanging around my neck. The crest on the front of it was almost worn smooth, but I could still make out the design: two crossed swords wrapped in thin vines. I spun it over in my hand, drawing my bottom lip into my mouth, trying not to think about the fact that the shining metal wasn't wet with water but with Kingfisher's sweat.

I could smell him.

The light musk of his sweat was inoffensive. In fact, it smelled sweet and heady, and lit a fire in the hollow of my stomach that I didn't understand. I wanted to lean into him and inhale deep. The need to do so was so overpowering that I almost went ahead and fucking did it. Gods, I—

“Anything?” Kingfisher's voice was rough as smoke.

I nearly jumped out of my godscursed skin. “Uh! Oh, um, no. Not—not yet. I, uh—lemme think.”

“What do you know about Fae anatomy, Osha?” he whispered.

I focused so hard on the pendant that my vision started to swim. I didn’t dare blink, though. I definitely wasn't brave enough to look up at him and meet his eyes. I knew he was staring at me, of course. I could have felt that fierce gaze through a sandstone wall.

“Not much,” I said, burning a hole in the pendant. “Your kind looks a lot like humans. I'm assuming a lot of it works the same.”

I waited for the mocking barb. The sharp, sneering retort. Kingfisher's reaction to being compared to a human wasn't going to be good. Surprisingly, it wasn't as disdainful as I would have expected. “On a surface level, yes,” he said softly. “We have similar internal organs, though wedopossess a few that humans do not.”

Extra internal organs? That was intriguing.

“We're bigger. Taller, of course,” he continued.

I arched an eyebrow at that. “Of course.”

“Our hearts are bigger by ratio.”