Page 60 of Court of Treachery

“I am Saradon’s kin.”

He sucked in a breath. “I beg your pardon?” Icy dread consumed him.It cannot be so!She had spoken his worst fear—because now there was no undoing her part in this. And no way he could spare her from Saradon.

48

DIMITRI

“Iam his great-granddaughter. The dwarven seer, Vanir, showed me.” She trailed off, as if there were more she did not wish to say. Or perhaps she wondered why she shared such deep things with him.

“Beyond any doubt?” he asked, desperate for any shred of hope that it wasn’t true—that she would not be pulled into the middle of the maelstrom with him. Desperate for her to continue, because hearing her speak was a balm after nothing but hate and conflict in his ears since he had last beheld her. Her palms still rested on his chest, her hands so delicate and light they felt as though he could break them with a thought. Her fragility terrified him.

“Beyond any doubt,” she whispered.

His insides twisted. This was all his fault—he kept making it worse, instead of staunching the flow. His unwitting thoughts had led Saradon right to her. Dimitri grasped her shoulders and met her gaze, trying to instil his urgency. “Then youmustgo. It is all the more reason to flee! He must not find you!”

She struggled in his grip, but he did not release her. “I don’t understand.”

“Heknows, Harper. Even if he is not certain, he has strong suspicions. Enough for him to seek you. He wants you. If you go to him, you walk to your own doom. I cannot shield you from him. Pleaseheed me. Please leave—with or without the dwarves.”

“Why do you care?” she asked him again desperately, her fingers winding into the silks of his shirt. It undid him.

“Because you made me!” he retorted before he could help himself. “Because you make me want to protect you from the tide of darkness that has been unleashed. Every damn thing you say and do makes me want you more—and I can take it no longer!”

“What?” she breathed, her face pale in the darkness. “Say that again. No lies.”

“I want you,” Dimitri growled, backing her into a tree. “I want you even though I know it is dangerous. I have wanted you since the moment you pulled that bow on me, and I saw the true colour of your spirit. I wanted you more when you held a knife to my throat and I realised fear would never fell your spirit. And I want you yet more every time you open that defiant little mouth of yours to call me out. I hate that you challenge me so, huntress. I love it. I desire it. I need it. And the peril we are in only makes me need you all the more, for if I am to die on the morrow, I want to die having known what it feels like to have tasted you.”

Compulsion crawled underneath his skin, urgent and consuming. He could hardly breathe past the torrent of it. His hands slipped inside her cloak to circle her waist, and she gasped at the contact. So did he. She felt even better under his hands than he had imagined. He would excise this demon from himself. Indulge this reckless want and purge it from his system. It was a kiss—just one. A harmless kiss. That would free him from this madness. This was nothing more than wanting whathe could not have, and once he quenched that urge, it would be satisfied. Wouldn’t it?

And yet, as he felt her lithe body melt under his touch, he knew with deep certainly that it would not be enough. Far from it. The opposite. This would not quench the flames—this would ignite an inferno. Judgement on himself be damned, Dimitri wanted her. And one kiss did not cover what he wanted to do to her—but he would take it and anything else she would give him.

Dimitri drew closer, so close that every heaving breath of hers pressed against the beat of his own heart, and lowered his head, so that their noses brushed. She froze in place, silver eyes gleaming at him. Those beautiful lips of hers were so painfully close it sent every nerve ending alight within him, longing to fuse that final hair’s breadth. But he would not. Not without her permission. Because there would be no going back from this.

“Tell me no, and I’ll stop,” he said roughly as their breaths mingled. He trembled from the restraint. Part of him wished she would deny him. Part of him desperately wanted her to have some self-control where he did not, to end this madness, so his feelings did not endanger either of them any further. But instead, Harper tilted her mouth up, tightened her grasp on his shirt, and tugged him to her waiting lips. And Dimitri unleashed himself upon her.

49

HARPER

Harper had been lost the moment Dimitrius had confessed his need for her—and beyond salvation the moment his hands had circled her waist and the burn of his palms had imprinted through the fabric. Her legs had buckled—and only the tree and his hold kept her standing.Thiswas what desire felt like—a potent storm without edges or end that consumed every fragment of her. She made her choice without hesitation, and as his lips crashed into hers, the world disappeared.

She opened to his punishing request at once, and his hot, wanting tongue slid into her mouth, wrestling with hers as her hands found their way up to tangle in that perfectly coiffed hair of his, utterly wrecking him the way he devastated her. This was no gentle kiss but a battle of tongues and teeth, licking, suckling, biting, and nipping with desperation. His hands planed up her back and down again, his nails digging in with a delicious bite of pain that edged her pleasure in something even more intoxicating. Dimitrius squeezed her buttocks and groaned into her mouth, and the sound sent fire chasing through every vein until all rational thought had fled her.

Tree bark scraped down her cloak as he hoisted her up. Harper spread her legs, locking them around his hips as he held her suspended there with the strength of his rigid arms. He pinned her between the tree and the hardness growing between his legs that nestled right into her centre. She writhed against it, her core molten with need, and he rocked into her with matching demand. She wanted more. Needed more—before common sense, guilt, and shame had air to breathe and grow. Never had someone ignited such passion within her, and now she had him between her legs, the fabric sliding between them was a barrier to it all.

Dimitrius broke the kiss, his voice ragged. “You are more than I ever could have dreamed of, Harper. One kiss will never be enough. You will be my ruin.”

She groaned as he rocked his hips against her once more—and then he swallowed that groan with another kiss. But then?—

“Harper?” Brand’s deep voice rang through the trees.

She stiffened, and Dimitrius froze against her too. Her head whipped toward the direction of camp. Intense need still coursed through her—but darkness pushed in, bringing an edge of fear to the waves crashing through her. Reality. It had interrupted again.Savedher again. From the irresistible temptation before her. “I have to go.”

They were chest to chest. That need of his still pressed between her legs. And gods, she wanted more. She wanted all of it. But she pushed him back and staggered on shaking legs to the next tree, leaning heavily against it for a second to try and catch the breaths she had let him steal from her.

“Don’t. Please,” he said, his dark eyes glittering in the shadows of the trees as he followed her. “Let me take you somewhere safe.” He circled an arm around her waist, and it nearly undid her anew, but her palm upon his chest froze him.

She had to stop this. No matter how incandescent it felt—how much she now realised the power that pure desire promised—Harper had to walk away now, or she would not be able to at all. She brought a trembling hand to her gloriously swollen and stinging lips, touching her fingertips to the skin there. The ghost of his touch still burned her. The cold void of night air upon her skin felt an abhorrent replacement for his heated kiss.

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