Page 86 of Fae Exile

Without Pru there, no one waited for me with a pretty robe, so I hastily dried myself and didn’t care that water continued to slide down my skin as I entered my bedchamber.

My bed loomed large, soft, and welcoming. After the innumerable discomforts of the Wilds, it alone was like a dream. Regardless, I doubted I’d find the stillness required for sleep, not with everything that had happened. Not with so many worries dragging down my thoughts.

Not with Rush somewhere in this blasted palace, his sexy face and body fogging up my thoughts despite the agitation he also brought with him.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice so gentle that for a moment I wondered if I was once more imagining him.

But no, there he stood, leaning against the open threshold to the antechamber where he’d slept before, when the queen had ordered him to guard me.

What a joke. Guard me from what? She was the only threat to me within this horrid place. I was only too late realizing how very much of all she did was an act. I doubted she was fully genuine with anyone, not even her precious pets, Ivar and Braque.

Rush had washed up too. His hair was wet, hanging in thick, loose waves around his shoulders and down his back. He wore sleep shorts and nothing else. I guessed his blades were within reach, even if we’d proven time and again they were little more than an illusion of a defense.

Was I all right?By sunshine, no, I most definitely was not.

So I nudged Saffron to curl up on a chaise, grabbed a heaping bunch of juicy grapes for him from a platter Rush must have fetched, and stalked into the center of the room.

After a diet that had consisted largely of armacoon for the last weeks, I was hungry. Famished, really.

Even so, I wasn’t ready for food. Not yet.

Rush’s eyes were back to glowing like full moons. As if he were a sleek, powerful predator, and I an intriguing curiosity, they tracked each of my movements. I felt as graceful as the large, elusive cats that prowled the Nightguard Mountains as I glided across the floor, every one of my steps silent.

I dropped the towel, my wet tresses sticking to my back in long, untamed tangles.

In the moments it took the towel to slide along the damp curves of my body to pool at my feet, Rush somehow managed to traverse the room. Never had I seen him move so fast, not even in the Gladius Probatio, when his very life had been at risk.

But then he stopped an arm’s length away, his eyes glowing brighter yet as they dragged along every inch of my exposedflesh, cataloging every swell and dip, and—by the sudden enraged flaring of his nostrils and the clenching of his jaw—every healing cut I’d endured from the umbracs’ barbed tentacles.

His gaze especially roamed the puckered kiss of death in the center of my chest.

At least, until it settled on my breasts and seemed to get stuck admiring the way my skin tightened in response, how my nipples formed perfect rosebuds begging silently for his thorough attention.

Just the heat of his stare had my core turning molten, my insides softening. The air thickened with the tantalizing scents of our combined arousal.

His tattoos climbed from his shoulders and arms to creep across his neck and up his jawline, down the length of his corded forearms and his strong hands. They snaked down along the hard planes and dips of his abdomen, creeping lower still, until they wound around the V that dipped beneath the waistband of his sleep shorts to disappear beneath them.

I licked my lips, caught myself doing it, and decided I didn’t care.

The time for abandon had well and surely arrived. If I had anything to thank the queen for, it was that she’d taught me tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. Hell, with her lurking around in the shadows, even the next moment wasn’t secured.

With my future so incredibly dubious, all I wanted to think about was the present, and even then,thinkingwasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

I stepped closer so that I had to raise my chin to take in his face. Such a fucking gorgeous, beautiful face. I could scarcely look away from it. From his body.

My fingers actually twitched with the need to drag themselves across every patch of his skin. To lick him all over too.

To devour him.

My thoughts surely reflected on my face, growing more flushed with every passing fantasy.

“Are you sure?” he grumbled in what was part growl, part breathless pant, as if he were as much man as he was his animalistic desires. Right then, I wanted both. I wanted it all.

“Am I sure?” I repeated, my own voice rough with my need. The flesh where my thighs joined was already hot and wet, and—by dragonfire—he hadn’t even touched me yet. I’d probably self-combust once he finally did.

“I’m not sure of much right now, Rush. And certainly not of us, how we move forward from this.” Gingerly, I caressed the kiss-like scar, still so tender and sore.

His eyes swirled as if clouds swept in front of twin moons, a swift breeze whipping them along.

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