Page 115 of Fae Champion

Rush looked to me, to her, then me again. His tattoos shone so brightly that their outline traced a swirling, entwining line through his tunic and crept once more up his neck and jaw, across the backs of his hands.

“Ivar,” the queen said, “remove his shackles.”

Ivar narrowed his eyes in Rush’s direction in concentration and the bands and chains vanished, along with their wafting, dancing shadows.

“You’d better hurry, Rush,” she urged, “unless you want all your friends and hers to witness what you’re about to do. They won’t remain asleep for long.”

Rush nodded absently, staring at a faraway point, finally standing with a grimace. He reached behind him to remove a few shards of crystal, wiped at some of the blood droplets smeared across his face, then drew a dagger.

Carefully skirting Bandel’s torso and the slick blood and goop beside the pygmy ogre’s severed head, he stalked toward me and then crouched.

I peered up at him, my heart a spasm of conflicting emotions, before taking in how his dagger already pointed my way.

His mouth opened as if he were going to speak, but instead he slammed it against mine.

32.UNCOMMON RIGHTNESS

When his tongue parted my lips and plunged into the heat of my mouth, I tasted lunacy. Rational reason dove away as swiftly as a flock of startled birds.

My heart and breathing immediately leapt at the feel of him—at the uncommonrightnessof our connection.

This must be what he meant when he insisted we were bonded.

In that moment, I could imagine no one better suited to me than he, no one who could possibly feel—be—this exceptional.

My previous fear evaporated. All distrust fled as if it could not have any possible place between us. Fearing him was wrong, and I would no longer allow it.

My body instantly softened and warmed, wanting nothing more than to yield to him, to open wide for him, to be physically joined with him—the man whom I’d once believed to be my enemy.

But he couldn’t be. Not when he kissed me as if his life depended on it as much as mine did. As if the power of our combined kiss could as easily create worlds as it could destroy them in a single blast of our passion.

A hungry moan slipped from between our lips, and I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine or both of ours. I closed my eyes. A clatter sounded ever so far away, suggesting he’d dropped his dagger.

His hands, rough and callused, big and strong, possessive and everywhere all at once, roamed my body—claiming every inch of it, of me. When his fingers bumped against my many scrapes and cuts, against the few shards of crystal still embedded in my skin, I experienced only elation.

I was flying, and Rush’s wings were the ones to prop me up.

I squeezed his shoulders, ran my hands over his neck, back, waist, chest, and thighs. Every layer of clothing between us was one too many.

I scooted awkwardly around my chains to be nearer to him, though I already knew then there was only one way I’d feel we were close enough.

We have an audience, I forced myself to remember, shocked I’d already forgotten given whom our audience was comprised of.

But his touch was both passionate and tender, fingertips barely a whisper along my cheek and brow as he kissed me and kissed me and kissed…

Thoughts that felt both my own and foreign atthe same time assured me,Everything’s going to be okay. I can trust Rush. He promised to protect me and he’d never hurt me, no matter what things look like now.

My fingers tangled in his long hair, tugging him closer still, pressing my mouth to his as if his were the breath I needed to survive.

I wasn’t going to die today.

No, there was too much to live for. I wanted to live for this, for our bond, for him.

I’d find another way to save … whomever it was I was concerned about saving.

Panting, I wrapped a hand around his neck, the other splaying into his hair some more, and greedily drank up the ecstasy he was offering me in a package as simple as a kiss.

Then, before I was ready to part—I’d never be ready to separate from him, I knew—he pulled back.

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