Page 46 of Brutal Birthright

Goddess-fucking-damnit.

Rowan’s lips ran the length, gliding over each knuckle until he reached the tip, and he nipped the soft pad of her finger. Before dropping her wrist like it scalded him.

All too quickly, the spell snapped, and the moment vanished.

He muttered an ancient curse and pushed off the wall.

She felt the gust of air from directly behind her as he portaled. Disappeared without so much as another word. Leaving her suddenly alone, surrounded by the scent of sex and forbidden fantasies.

And infuriatingly, still aching for him.

Chapter 15

He crossed a line.

Several fucking lines.

Selfishly and foolishly, despite knowing exactly what he was doing, he thought it would eradicate her from his system.

But it only made it a million times worse.

If Rowan had been hungering for just a glimpse at this girl’s sweetness before, now he’d allowed himself a taste.

Now… he was fucking starving.

The only fucking thing he wanted was to feast on the honeyed nectar of her. To hear her breathy little whimpers and moans. To know what it would feel like to have her spread out, wet, and wanting beneath him.

Over the course of the ensuing weeks, he kept himself as busy as possible. Hardly a difficult task, between running the training arena and monitoring the protective shield of the blood wards and trying to find some answers to the godsdamn mystery of the murders.

Keeping on top of the shitheap laid out at his feet was enough to have his hands itching to swing a blade, preferably at one of his brothers. But desperate times and all… Instead, he’d gotten used to taking his frustrations out by throwing himself into pounding the trails around the academy’s forested perimeter. Swimming as far and long and deep into the lake as possible almost gave him a temporary reprieve.

But his thoughts strayed back to that day, time and again, without fail.

In that moment, he’d seen it. His hands beside hers. Tattooed and rough and capable of snapping a neck like a twig or swinging a blade with precision. Hands accustomed to delivering a fatal blow. Her small, delicate fingers splayed on the wall right alongside his own. The hands that were capable of lethal force in their own right–even more so when properly trained—but for now were fresh with the innocence of youth.

The difference between hands that had lived through thirty winters as opposed to three centuries of warfare.

She was everywhere. Like his own personal ghost of horny, illicit decision-making. There was nowhere to hide from the consequences of his own fucking actions. Which was only made worse by the fact that it didn’t seem to affect the girl… at all.

She carried on as though nothing had happened between them.

That day he’d cut in on her training with Etienne had been a mistake. Knowing how her hands felt all over his body as she’d practiced each manoeuvre was slow and insidious torture. But fucked if he’d have stood by and permitted that jerk off to touch her like that. Something dark and possessive had taken hold of him in that moment; he’d made the choice to greedily steal her for himself. Only now, he was completely screwed.

There were only so many ways he could prevent the vampire from training with her. Pairing her up with some of the other students wasn’t going to do her any favours. They were by far the two most likely candidates for the Astrals. Which meant they, more often than not, would need to spar against each other and push each other while in class.

Never mind the fact that he couldn’t keep stepping in and training her himself without drawing unwanted attention. Could he?

And after all that, he now found himself sitting through a security debriefing with the royal guards, with his mind firmly elsewhere. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to bloody well go. He’d lived too long and seen too much shit for a pair of tits to distract him like this.

Only that was the problem, wasn’t it?

She was more than just a piece of ass.

He’d somehow found himself intrigued by her fierceness, as much as she infuriated him with her rash behaviour. With each passing day, she honed her skills and worked fucking hard. Committing resolutely to everything thrown at her like a hurricane carving a path through all that dared stand in her way.

Oriana had upended everything. And that was an enormous fucking issue considering the position they both found themselves in.

He jolted as Finnic clapped him on the shoulder. All around him, the rest of the fae guards pushed out of their chairs and made their way out of the room. Fuck. Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose, resting his elbows on the long table filling the centre of the room.

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