Page 56 of Her Dark Reflection

‘To confirm your allegiances.’

I shuddered as I felt Draven’s lips leave my wrist to brush my shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.

‘Imagine what they’d do if they caught you here with me.’ His words ghosted over my skin and I drew in a sharp breath as I felt his teeth against the curve of my neck.

‘To Gwinellyn first and foremost, and to Linus of course. If your interests align with theirs, I could see how we might support each other.’ The prince’s voice was more difficult to hear now. Had he lowered it, or was it just hard to focus?

‘They’d kill me,’ I gasped, pushing my hands against his chest with little conviction as he pressed me against the wall. ‘I’d be beheaded for treason.’

‘And if our king has lost sight of his own best interests…’

‘Try to be quiet then,’ Draven whispered, and with that he kissed me.

Hekissedme.

Finally.

I lost all sense of where I was as I drowned in him, in his lips against mine, in the way he kissed me like he was slowly destroying me, like he was a crushing force annihilating every shred of resistance one millimetre at a time. His hands ran down my back, leaving lines of prickling fire in his wake, and I gripped his shirt and pulled him closer as something rabid and unfamiliar woke beneath my skin, something that relished in the feeling of his body against mine, something that disregarded every threat, every insult, that saw the trade of vulnerability for satisfaction and saidyes. There was a rustling of fabric as he gathered my skirt and petticoat to skim his fingertips over my stocking and down my leg, pulling at my thigh, raising it around his waist, perching my foot on the back of one of the benches.

‘…support of the guild over the sanctum…’

The words of the men below us became garbled, my mind failing to assign meaning to them and then failing to collect them at all as my focus shrank down to my body, to the way it was responding, to the way it quivered at attention as it anticipated his next move. I thrummed with wanting him, like I was the string on a lute being plucked just so. His cool fingers were a screaming presence against my hot skin as he slowly danced them higher, tantalising the molten heat that had roared to life between my legs, as though all the blood in my body had drawn to a single throbbing point.

‘You don’t confound me, Vixen,’ he whispered. ‘I know what you want.’

You.The answer tore through me with a gut-wrenching certainty, coaxed out of this newly primal part of me that only wanted to be filled, that wanted him closer, that did not care how he could ruin me.

‘Touch me.’ A demand, albeit a trembling one, and he obeyed, winding his other hand in my hair as he reached the part of me that ached, hissing against my mouth as he found me wet and wanting.

I dropped my head back against the wall as he traced circles against me, my breath coming faster, louder, until he took his hand from my hair, pressed it against my mouth and ordered me to hush, the command a wash of scorching breath against my ear. I gripped his neck with both hands and sunk my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from crying out as he slipped into me, his fingers slow, his pace measured, refusing to respond to the way I was beginning to tremble, the way my back arched against him, the way I pulled him closer.

The tension of months of wanting him shook me like an opium addiction, like I could scent the release I so fiercely craved. When he curled his fingers and broke the building tension, the relief that tore through me left no satiation in its wake. I was a quivering wreck of euphoria, all limp-limbed but still ravenous, still wanting more, and I gripped his hips with the intention to have it.

But he pulled away, withdrawing his hand, inviting a space between us that shocked with its detachment. He brought his fingers back up my body and held my gaze as he dipped them in his mouth, before grasping my chin between a slick thumb and forefinger.

‘In case you forgot who you belong to.’

The room below was quiet and still, and I realised Dovegni, Sherman and the prince were no longer there. Perhaps it was a blessing; the fact that they’d left meant they hadn’t discovered us. But that they were plotting in the very room I stood, and I hadn’t been present enough to follow their conversation, left me feeling shaken. I pulled at my gown, straightening up as I kept my eyes on the wall, grateful for the dark that would hide my face. The silence was heavy.

Draven leaned in and placed a light kiss against my unresponsive mouth, then slipped something smooth and round into my hand.

‘For your husband,’ he said, each word landing like a stone dropped from a height.

My heart thumped.

Once. Twice. Three times.

‘What will it do to him?’

There was the feather-light brush of fingertips against my cheek. ‘Don’t ask.’

I felt him leave, felt the shifting darkness like it was as thick as oil, felt the residue of him lingering on my lips, my thighs. I should have followed him, should have reached out and taken hold of him, demanded to renegotiate, to be told more, but my body felt alien to me, and my thoughts moved through syrup. His footsteps were loud and crisp below me, the door opening and closing like the final word in an argument we had never even began, and I was still standing in the gallery staring at the wall.

I had wanted him from the first moment I saw him lounging in the Winking Nymph, but what had just happened felt like it had nothing to do with desire. No one knew better than me how lust could be a game of dominance, and it felt like I had been played. I had been lured into a compromising position in the very room where enemies were conspiring, and if they had realised I was there, had realised I was with a man… If Draven had been looking to show me just how strongly he held me in his power, it had been an effective display.

Don’t cross me, Rhiandra.

I flushed with shame as I wondered how I had allowed it to happen. I’d been attracted to men before, but this was a different beast entirely, one that seemed almost beyond my ability to resist, let alone to control. It scared me.

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