Page 77 of The Master and the Marionette

Dessin is silent for a long moment. “We need more information. Do you think you can get him back to your room?”

I roll my neck, whimpering at the thought of keeping this act up. Performing for sadists like a little wooden puppet on a stage in a carnival for the criminally insane.

“Yes.”

“I won’t force you. We can leave on your word.” He pauses, pursing his lips, a wave of murderous irritation taking hold of him. “Or mine if I have to watch you go through that again.”

“I can do it.” I smile weakly, reaching my hand out to run my fingers across his jawline. He looks like he’s about to keep talking, going on about Judas and maybe another plan, until his eyes fall to my hand. A momentary distraction like my touch scrambled his brain, made him lose his train of thought entirely.

He snatches my hand in the air, examines it like a foreign entity he has just discovered.

“You’re so cold, Skylenna.” And he kisses my fingers, one by one, then my knuckles, my palm, my wrist. As I hum my approval, he seems to snap out of the tender trance he was in, locking eyes with me. But I don’t get any warning at all.

None.

He’s quicker than a strike of lightning as he swoops down, claiming my mouth with his own, stunning me with his hot, wet tongue sliding past my lips until I can taste him, I can feel his breath skimming the roof of my mouth. And I’m in his cloud of cedar and sandalwood aroma, a sharp breath to take in as much of that sweet, rugged scent as possible.

Urgent heat swarms between my legs. That tongue, wicked and invasive, makes my body tremble in hunger. It remembers his mouth licking my center. It remembers the way he threw my legs over his shoulders. It craves him like a new drug I’ve only gotten a small taste of.

“Skylenna.” He breaks our kiss, gasping. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

I make something of a needy moaning sound.

“You’ve been through hell today. I can’t—”

“Can you take me to your room? I don’t want to be here. Not in this room. In this bed.”

I want to be in his bed.

I want to be in the thirteenth room.

23. “Will you wait for me?”

“Until I’m old and gray.”

He loses his words, nodding before he scoops me in his arms, keeping me wrapped in two blankets. I’m weightless to him. A small bag of feathers. Because he uses one hand to hold me and the other to open the door. As we step out into the hallway, I tighten my hold around his neck, breath hitching in my throat as I look down at the guard.

He’s—asleep. Head back against the wall, mouth gaping open.

Or is he?

“I drugged his flask,” Dessin mutters.

I snicker. “Effective.”

He closes the thirteenth door behind us, slowly, careful not to leave an echo that bounces off the walls. And I’m being draped over his bed, so carefully I stare up at him in shock. Like he’s afraid to break me. He’s far gentler with me than I’ve ever seen him with anyone.

It turns my heart to putty.

Dessin steps in front of the side of my face that’s resting on his pillow. “Lift your head.”

I blink twice. “Okay.” I strain my neck, lifting as he tosses the pillow to the floor, sitting so that his lap is now my pillow. He coaxes me back down, combing my long hair to drape over his legs.

I stifle a shiver. His hands are the source of chills that want to run blindly down my nervous system. Bliss. Paradise.

“You’re going to bruise here from the tub restraints,” Dessin says, using one finger to lightly touch the side of my neck, the area I was being forcefully held underwater.

But then his hands are slipping under my shoulders, massaging the tight muscles across my upper back, then coasting up to my sore neck. I let out a husky moan.

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