Page 52 of Quicksilver

I couldn't help it. I looked up. “Really?”

He nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“Wow. Weird.”

“Our eyesight is far superior to yours. Our...sense of smell,” he said, his eyes lowering, traveling down my body.

Heat flared in the center of my chest. The way he was looking at me...there was nothing friendly about it. Kingfisher and I weren't friends. At best, we were loose allies who irritated the hell out of each other. So why, then, was he looking at me right now like I was an ally he'd like to fuck?

His eyes snapped back up to mine. “Our sense of taste is superior to yours. Touch. Our sense of hearing is very sharp. We can hear the smallest sound at a great distance.” The silver in his right eye flared as he exhaled, his breath fanning across my cheek. “We can hear each other's heartbeats.”

Out of nowhere, he grabbed me by the wrist.

I tensed, jolting, but he didn't hurt me. He took the pendant, lifting it, placing the metal between his teeth, holding it out of the way as he moved my hand to the center of his chest. “Feel that?” he asked, his bottom lip pressing against the pendant as he spoke with it still clamped between his teeth. The tips of hiscanines also pressed into the swell of his bottom lip. I couldn't tear my eyes away from them.

“Dum.Dum.Dum.”

Kingfisher tapped the back of my hand in time with the rhythm of his heart. The pause between each beat was so long that I thought I was going to scream around the tension that built between each one. “Slow. Steady,” he murmured. “Our Fae hearts rarely betray us. We’re calm creatures. But you, Osha? You're a ball of chaos. Your heart betraysyouat every turn.” Quickly, he placed his hand on my chest, right between my breasts. I didn't have time to react to the contact; he began tapping out the rhythm of my heart against my sternum. “Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum. Fast. Erratic, like a hummingbird. I hear it bouncing around all over the place when you look at me. Did you know that?”

“No. I didn't.” I swallowed, a wave of nausea making my mouth sweat as I pulled away from him.Triedto pull away from him. He still had hold of my wrist. He didnotlet go. He allowed the pendant to drop from between his teeth, the corner of his mouth kicking up as he tugged me closer to him. His other hand moved from my chest, sliding down, around my waist, settling in the small of my back. His thighs drew together, pinning me by the hips between them.

Panic.

Panic, panic, panic!

Externally, I was calm when I spoke, but inside I was screaming. “Let me go, Fisher.”

Immediately, he released me. His legs splayed wide, letting me go. He relinquished his hold on my wrist, too. His hand at the small of my back went nowhere, though. He wasn't using it to hold me in place. It was just a point of contact, and the heat of that contact between us felt like it was scorching me through my shirt.

Sliding forward an inch on the stool, Fisher dipped his head so that his mouth was unreasonably close to mine. “I've fucked plenty of humans,” he whispered. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yes. Seeing as how you...seem tohateus...so much.” His mouth. Gods, his fucking mouth. I needed to look away. Ihadto.

“I don't hate your kind. I'm just disappointed by howbreakableyou are. If I held you down and fucked you the way I'm imagining fucking you right now, I doubt that you’d survive it.”

I was burning alive. I was a living torch, blazing out of control. “I wouldn't fuck you—if you were the last living—”

“Don't bother.” The words held bite. “Lying is pointless with your heart betraying you so loudly.”

“It's beating fast because I'mafraid,” I snapped.

“Of me?” Kingfisher huffed a blast of laughter down his nose. “No, you're not. Youshouldbe, but you're not. That's one of the things I like most about you.”

“You're holding me against my will.”

“Really?” He looked down at our bodies: his legs still on either side of me but held away from me. His other hand, resting on top of his thigh again. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “You can pull away at any time. Looks to me like you're choosing to stay. It also looks like you're having to stop yourself from touching me. You want to touch me the way I'm touching you, don't you? To feel the weight of me beneath your palms. The heat of me...” He angled his head a fraction, something wicked dancing in his eyes.“Just to see what would happen.”

“You're wrong.”

He shook his head. “I'm not.”

“Yes! Youare!”

He gave me a reproachful look. “Are you going to make me say it?”

“Say what?”

He leaned in even closer. My breath froze in my chest, my throat closing up, but I couldn't move. He grazed the bridge of his nose along the line of my jaw, the contactsolight, up toward the shell of my ear. “That your body is betraying you in other ways. That I can smell you, Little Osha, and I'm thinking about drinking the sweet nectar you're making for me straight from the fucking cup.”