Page 46 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Fi had started dancing when she’d left home.

Those first couple years on her own, she’d sought sanctuary in dim clubs and distracting music, the touch of a dance partner who could share her soul for a four-minute number then disappear without further demand.

She still visited some old haunts when work brought her through the cities, but it was hard to find anyone to twirl her in Nyskya.

She rose with every bristle raised.

It occurred to Fi, this daeyari wasn’t a stupid creature. He must have noticed the treacherous flush on her cheeks. The tension, as she lay her hand in his, a whispered touch, claws soft against her fingers.

His other arm wrapped her lower back. Fi knew the stance. And he wanted to lead? She settled in like a mare with a reluctant bridle, easing her shoulders, tapping a foot to the music.

The first steps came simple. When Antal pushed, she swayed away. He pulled, and she glided back. He guided her through a spin that would have twirled the skirt of a dress. All Fi wore was a sweater and snow-weathered pants.

“Why are you scowling, Fionamara?” Antal sounded weary. Or guarded. “You bare your teeth like a daeyari with a stomachache.”

He deserved every inch of snarled lip, for hiding this from her. “You really do know how to dance?”

“Does this displease you?”

“Wait here.” She broke from his grasp. “If you’re going to dance properly, then we have to dance properly .”

“What do you mean—”

“Turn around!”

Antal grumbled something about Veshri and black eternities as he faced away. Game or not, she had appearances to maintain. Fi opened her closet, engulfed in the scent of cedar, the musk of furs.

She retrieved a dress.

It was a ruthless thing, black and simple.

The top wrapped her chest like armor, clasping around her neck and leaving arms bare.

The waist cut tight. Below that, a flare of Void fabric, sleek folds weighted to hang when still and fly with motion.

She returned to her dance partner with fists on her hips.

“There,” Fi said.

Antal tipped a glance over his shoulder, expression dry with annoyance.

His brow lifted. He stared first at her uncompromising face. Then, another slow slip of eyes downward, less subtle than before. The correct response. This dress made Fi’s tits look fantastic.

Gratifying, that a daeyari would notice.

“There?” His voice came rougher than usual.

“It’s been weeks since I had a proper dance. With what we’re up against, who knows if…” She severed the thought. Held out her hand. “Go ahead.”

Antal clasped her fingers, his cool touch sending a shiver through her bare arms. He tilted her wrist, inspecting her floral tattoos. Daisies. Dahlias. Lilacs and snowy lily. All of them usually hidden by her coats.

“One per job,” Fi said with a taunting sort of pride. “Remember that art heist at the Karvez Estate, south end of your territory?”

Antal nodded. Fi pointed to a water lily, an homage to one of the paintings she’d smuggled to a collector on the Summer Plane.

“And this one, a load of conductive ore from Tyvo Territory.” She indicated a pink tundra orchid.

“A stolen dowry from the Autumn Plane.” Next, a lilac, resembling one of the load’s sapphire-crusted necklaces.

“A menace,” Antal all but growled. His smirk snared Fi like thorns to soft flesh, pulling her into the waiting crook of his arm. “Impressive, that we never crossed paths sooner.”

“I made sure we didn’t, daeyari.”

A new song started, quick with a clarinet above the bass. They resumed their stance, hands clasped, Fi’s arm on his shoulder and his around her back. He smelled like fresh snow and a snap of eternity.

This dance had no memorized routine, only a common language of rhythm, the rest left to improvisation.

Antal pushed them into motion on gliding steps, his hand holding Fi’s only tight enough to tell his intention.

As she relaxed, he pressed his arm at her back, pulling them into a turn.

Close enough to share a breath. Then he sent her out again, connected only by fingertips, a twirl that lifted her dress and spun her hair into a flurry of curls.

Though he led, Fi pushed her own reply. When he pulled, she lingered in the motion, flaring her skirt to the rise of a horn in the music. He grinned. His response came seamlessly, shifting to match her, following the rhythm of the new instrument she’d called them to.

And then, they were speaking without words. A push and pull of melody, Antal asking and Fi answering. She spun at arm’s length and swung tight at his side, hips brushing, grins like warring blades.

The song ended too soon.

With silence came stillness, the easing of breaths and softening of stances. This was the time to say “thank you for the dance” then politely step away.

Neither of them did.

The next song came on like thunder through Fi’s ribs, a burst of horn and drums, twice the tempo of the previous number. Antal flashed a fanged smile.

Fi smirked back.

He pulled her into the song like plunging into a current.

He walked on water, his turns tighter, feet impossibly light despite the breath-stilling pace.

Fi swirled through steps she’d never seen before—words she’d never spoken before—yet he led with such surety.

She followed, trusting his direction, the pulse of music replacing the heartbeat in her chest.

This type of dance didn’t have to be so tight.

Fi had kept plenty of partners at arm’s length, yet she leaned into Antal like the pull of a star, keeping close to keep their movements quick.

Keeping close because she wanted to. The smell of him was like tumbling through a thunderstorm.

When she glimpsed his eyes, they gleamed with the heat of an inferno and the depthless black of the Void.

Again, the song ended.

They spun to a standstill, breathless, sweat sheening Fi’s skin. Antal’s arm wrapped her waist, the rise and fall of his chest such a tangible thing, not the wraith she’d once taken daeyari for.

“You dance better than I expected,” she panted. Always a surprise, this creature. Always finding new ways to take her breath away, no matter how fiercely she fought to keep her barbs up.

“And you dance as well as I expected,” he murmured. “Like fire beneath your feet.”

The next song began. They didn’t join it, motionless together as the music spun a slow soliloquy of clarinet, a heartbeat drum.

Pull away.

Fi ought to pull away, but she didn’t.

Who was this creature, who’d filled her with terror when they met?

Who’d just danced her into a stupor? Once, their game had been a contest of who’d back down first. Now, they both refused to balk.

His proximity was a weapon, stirring the same thrill in her heart as when she’d first stood her ground against him.

The same smolder in her belly as when he’d held her against the wall with his teeth.

The same shudder as when he’d pressed his forehead soft to hers.

She thought about kissing him. Would his mouth taste like blood and old flesh? How would his teeth scrape against her lips?

Antal studied her breathless perplexion with the ghost of a smirk, that quiet acuity that came with agelessness. As if he could read every thought in the flicker of her lashes. Or maybe, just in the quickening of her pulse.

“What’s wrong, Fionamara?” Her name rumbled off his tongue, velvet and slow. “You look like you want something.”

She wanted him . Wanted to know what he felt like. What he tasted like. She’d wanted him for weeks, and no matter how she fought it, the ache had only fiercened. Enough to make her stupid. Enough to make her reckless.

Enough to shiver through every inch of cruelly thin dress pressed to his side.

“What do I look like when I want something?” she sparred, feigning indifference.

“You’re a frustrating creature. Sometimes, you look like you want to rip my throat out.”

She hummed, not in disagreement.

“And sometimes,” he said, lower. “You look like you want… something else. I worry I’m not able to tell the difference.”

Fi ought to feel foolish for leaning into him.

Only, he leaned into her, too. A brush of tail against her bare ankle, a flare of nostrils as he breathed her in, that flutter in her stomach that didn’t feel like fear anymore.

“Maybe,” she said.

“ Maybe? You’re usually so assertive.” His voice dipped, a purr that rattled every sensible piece of her. “I do enjoy that about you.”

“Maybe… I’m not sure it’s something I should want.” Her throat, exposed to fangs. Soft skin bared to claws.

“I see. You aren’t alone in that.”

Fi’s breath caught at the words. At the glint of his eyes as they swept her face, her mouth, the straps of her dress. It was one thing to catalogue his taunts and speculate what they might mean.

Another thing entirely, to hear him say it.

To hear them both say it. This thing they’d danced around, strained to a breaking point, already no space between them as she leaned against his chest.

He reached for her face. Fi didn’t flinch.

Antal brushed a swirl of rainbow hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Fi shivered at the whisper of claws over skin. At the gentleness of it. At how she wasn’t sure she wanted him to be gentle. Was he still playing with her? A game to delight in her discomfort?

She ran an experimental hand down his chest. Soft fabric. Hard muscle. The rumble in his throat didn’t sound like playing.

“Small moments?” she asked, her voice too soft for either of their good.

“Small moments,” he agreed with equal treachery.

“What other small moments do you enjoy?”

When he hummed, Fi felt it in her bones. His gaze raked her like claws. The real things pressed her waist. She wanted them in her hair. Under her dress.

“Some things you’d enjoy as well,” he said.

“Would I?”

“Why else does your breath come short whenever I’m this close to you?”

He leaned closer.

Then froze, when Fi jabbed a finger beneath the soft hollow of his chin.

“That’s not what I asked, daeyari.”

She held him there. An immortal captive, commanded with the tip of a single finger. Had he always looked at her so ravenously? Or had she assumed it a different type of hunger? He seemed to like when she fought.

Fi liked when he fought, too. That line pulled taut between them.

“You’d enjoy it,” Antal vowed. Then, bolder, “I dread how you’d torment me otherwise. Certainly, I’d never hear the end of it.”

Void save her, Fi devoured his taunts. His goading grin and the spark in his eyes. Heat kindled in her belly, sinking with perilous surety where she pressed her thighs together.

She wanted him. And what was stopping her?

Survival instinct? He’d shared her home, and never crossed a single line she set down.

Caution? Swiftly vanishing, every moment the hard weight of his body pressed flush against her.

Daeyari carried no diseases in their immortal forms, couldn’t make children with mortals.

And what was wrong with a little curiosity? A night of unwinding, before their next dance with mortal danger?

Antal didn’t flinch, when Fi’s fingers settled on his jaw.

A semblance of stone, as her thumb traced the smooth line of his chin.

Barely a twitch, as she touched his mouth, following the curve of soft lips.

“You’re the frustrating creature,” she whispered, heart racing off a cliff ledge. “Some parts of you don’t seem so terrifying. But then there’s…” She pressed harder, parting his lips.

Revealing the teeth. Not just the long canines he flashed with each grimace, but sharp molars, the clamp of a carnivore. Fi had seen those teeth carve flesh from bone.

They’d held her down, soft enough to leave no mark.

“You think I can’t keep my appetites separate, Fionamara?” He didn’t pull away, didn’t snap at her challenge. His eyes burned down to her core.

She snared his face in both hands.

“I think you bring out the worst in me.”

Then, just as ferocious, Fi pulled him into a kiss.