Page 65 of The Naga Lord's Pretty Little Mouse

I should leave.

Instead, I push inside.

Xirath stands near the hearth,his back to me, broad shoulders rigid with tension. Firelight casts his scales in hues of gold and crimson, the ridges along his spine catching the glow like molten metal.

He does not turn.

But he knows I am here.

Something in the room shifts, thickens, as if the space between us has just become smaller, hotter.

"You’ve been avoiding me," I say, voice sharp, cutting.

His head lifts slightly, but he does not speak.

A slow, deliberate breath fills my lungs, the weight of my anger pressing hard against my ribs. "You cannot just?—"

He moves.

Not toward me.

Away.

A sharp laugh slips from my throat, bitter and edged with something dangerously close to desperation. "Is this how it is, then?" I step forward, refusing to let him dismiss me, refusing to let this tension fester between us like a wound left to rot.

"You kiss me, and now you can’t even look at me?"

His shoulders tighten.

"You claim I belong to you," I press, voice rising. "But you won’t even face me?"

A flick of his tail, the barely restrained force of it enough to send dust scattering along the floor.

"Enough," he growls, finally turning.

Golden eyes burn through me, searing in their intensity.

The force of it hits like a blow to the chest.

"You think this is a game?" His voice is quiet, but there is nothing soft in it.

A slow shake of my head. "I think you don’t know what you want."

A dangerous stillness settles over him, the kind that precedes violence, the kind that makes something low in my stomach twist.

"You think I do not want you?" His voice drops, a hushed thing laced with something brutal, something that wraps around my throat and tightens.

"You tell me," I say, breath ragged, too aware of the way he is looking at me, the way his body coils as if he is fighting himself.

"I am not your mate," I remind him. I need to remind him.

He takes a step forward.

Something inside me bucks against the instinct to move back.

"You are not," he agrees.

Another step.

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