Page 41 of An Empress of Fire & Steel

She batted her eyelids. “Okay, are you ready?”

“I was born ready,” he said, looking from her lips to her eyes.

“Here they are…” She let a sensual smile of her own slash across her face.

“Say them,” the small impatient plea escaped him as his chest hit hers. Every part of his warmth swept in and almost took her feet from underneath her.

But she would win this, especially tonight.

She ran her teeth over her lip and he watched every moment of it before she said slowly, “Good. Night.”

Smiling, she turned her back on him and shut the doors behind her. Out of the sight of his ocean blue eyes, she slid down the panels of the door to the floor and she ran a hand over her face before placing it over her heart.

It was still beating. It was beating so fast that it might grow wings and fly from her chest.

Surely, she couldn’t do this, toy with dangerous desires and escape with her heart still intact?

One thing was for sure, with Torin being her guard, she was about to find out.

A beam of light cascaded through the window to Breighly Baxgroll’s bed, her eyes aching as she awoke from the night before. Blinking her lids open, her eye sockets felt like they had been gouged out with a hot spoon.

Damned liquor! The shots she had been drinking off the belly of a Fae last night always gave her the worst hangover in the kingdom, and she never seemed to learn her lesson.

That was the untamed wolf in her.

She groaned, moving a hand to her face, sweeping her wild blonde hair from her forehead that seemed to be glazed with sweat. Come to think of it, she was roasting hot. She felt clammy, like something was sticking to her, a scent that was not her own.

Oh, no.

Suddenly, a thousand memories of last night in La Luna filtered through her mind. Her on the bar top, dancing as the crowd took in every shake of her hips. It wasn’t the first performance she had ever done. Other glimmers of her memories peeked through; taking shots of hard liquor, taking off her top as the whole bar roared in delight, kissing a nameless Fae, kissing someone else, and a whole lot of ink.

Another groan escaped her. Why did she have to take it too damned far every damned time? Why couldn’t she have just a normal night in the markets? Well, she supposed normal and the Huntswood markets didn’t really go hand in hand, but, recently, it seemed like it was her mission to get as fucked up as possible.

She rubbed one foot on top of the other and the tingling pain from wearing heels ran along the pads of her feet. A wolf’s pain threshold was higher than a human’s, possibly higher than a hunter’s—

Oh, fuck. A hunter!

She turned her head slowly, hoping to find an empty bed, but she knew by the heat under the blankets that she was not alone.

“Good morning, sunshine,” a silky deep voice said softly.

Breighly snapped her head in that direction, sending a wave of dizziness with her. Lying beside her on the bed was the butt-naked, inked male from last night. His cheeky smile glittered into his chocolate brown eyes that had golden flecks glittering through them, and his wide jaw expanded.

“Round five?” he suggested. “Before I need to go.”

“Round five?” her voice came out rougher than expected. And higher. She coughed down the surprise that grazed against her throat.

“Things did get very hot last night.” He raised one eyebrow, which already annoyed her with its perfectness. No guy’s eyebrows should be that perfect. “You suggested round five last night before falling asleep, leaving me all alone.”

She wriggled slightly against the mattress to find that she had no underwear on either.

Great! This wasn’t going to be dignified by any means, but she may as well get it over with.

“Okay.” She sat up quickly—too quickly—flinging her legs out of the bed and pulling all the sheets with her as she stood, draping them over her nakedness. “You need to leave and leave quietly.” Her legs felt like they were walking through water as she took a few steps back, putting space between them. Swallowing a wave of nausea, she ordered, “Now.”

The man in her bed lay sprawled out idly, his head propped on his hand, amusement coating his face. He was still naked, and he didn’t seem to give two shits. She noticed the tattoo that trailed its way onto his square jaw—thorns and vines of the ancient world—and quickly, a vision of how much she had kissed into it last night, how much she had licked at his throat, came to the forefront of her mind.

She blinked the thoughts away, her gaze meeting his again. “Are you fucking deaf? You need to leave, now.”

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