Page 145 of Cursed Shadows 5

The air disturbs around me with his departure.

But the moment his hand clasps on the doorknob, something jolts through me, a slingshot of ice-cold panic.

“Wait.”

The rush of that wispy word stops him dead in his tracks. It always does.

He stills, unmoving, his back to me, hand on the doorknob.

Silence is hushed all over the tavern.

And that silence remains.

I have no follow up. I have nothing to say more thanwait, nothing to desire beyond a need for him to stay.

As though reading that on me, my resistance, but sensing the vulnerable opening, Daxeel is a sudden tension of determination.

He pushes back from the door and rounds on me.

My face twists with his advance.

I am motionless against it—and still, as he grabs my face by the cheeks and brings his mouth to mine.

His kiss starts soft.

††††††

The bedchamber door crashes open. It swings, violent, and smacks the wall hard enough to shudder the room.

I might care more about that if I had air to breathe.

I don’t, not with Daxeel’s mouth crushing mine.

My teeth ache against the harshness of his kiss.

There is a frantic urgency whirling around us, in the way he’s grabbing at my face, trapping my cheeks in his grip, and kicking his boot back—

The door slams shut with a boom.

I gasp at the sound, and he swallows it as though starved, and I am his source of everything and anything.

He takes from me.

His hands shoot down to the waistband of my breeches, and he’s clamouring with the buttons, never taking his mouth off mine.

I am not unwilling.

My boots are scuffing over the floorboards, staggered steps reaching all the way to the edge of the bed—and I am yanking the sweater over my head with each, fumbled step.

The mattress edge knocks into the back of my knees.

I fall back—

And Daxeel falls with me.

The rush doesn’t fade.

It only picks up, and Daxeel’s frustration comes in a grunt against my mouth as he wrangles off my breeches.

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