Page 36 of Of Blood and Banes
Oh, for fuck’s sake, am I not going to get any sleep tonight?I turn over my shoulder and glare at Darian who is arching his back into the wall, shifting his hips uncomfortably and attempting to adjust his pants.
“What are you doing?” I hiss, a cold chill racing over my naked legs. I must have kicked off all the blankets. My gaze fixes on him as he rolls his body, and I follow the motion from his chest down toward his groin. I stiffen—nearly as stiff as his cock bulging beneath his pants. Unable to tear my eyes off him, I can’t help to stifle a laugh.
“Maybe if you pulled your nightgown over yourass,” he grounds out, “I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
I laugh again.Simple-minded man.
“You won’t be laughing when I get out of these,” he growls, the perfect balance between a threat and sensual promise.
Retrieving the dagger from beneath my pillow, I hop off the bed and strut toward him. I can’t help but smile at his unmistakable frustration. “Is that a threat I hear? Need I remind you of how to speak to me?”
His eyes follow every curve of my body, from my bare feet up my legs to my hips, then he locks onto my eyes. In this situation, he’s so easy to manipulate. His green eyes flare with an explosion of anger, frustration, and…craving. I suppose I wouldn’t be too surprised if he still fantasizes about our one night we had back in Arterias.
Stopping a few steps outside the reach of his chains, I lower to the balls of my feet. Perhaps physical torture wouldn’t work on Darian—but there are other ways. I only have to find out what those ways are. And seeing the raging mix of desire and hatred in his eyes is prompting me in one specific direction.
Edging my knees open slowly, I whisper, “I’d be…happy…to negotiate a deal with you.”
The cold air rushes between my legs, and my skin pebbles. He flicks a narrowed glare from my face down to my legs for a split second, before he jerks his head away, straining against his manacles once more. Desperate to put space between us.
It could be the lack of sleep prompting me. Maybe even the fact I’m hungry for answers that could lead to eliminating King Aaric and restoring peace in the kingdoms. Or…or perhaps it’s that, no matter how much I try to mask my ulterior motives, something in me wants him as much as he does me. I’ve been trying to lie to myself that I’m not drawn to him like a moth to a flame—hungry to touch him even if it means my own demise. Some undeniable and indestructible burn that catches me by surprise every time. And out of him and Cole, I can’t feel guilty about this. Only a touch of self-hatred.
“If you tell me why the King is burning down the towns, I’ll touch you,” I whisper as softly as I can.
Pressing himself back against the wall to get as far away from me as possible, he growls, “Don’t you dare.”
But caught within his burning stare, I see it. How his breath hitches, how his eyes keep wandering lower. He’s as tempted as I am. Resting my hands on my knees, I slowly drag them up my thighs, the hem of my nightgown sliding with my hands and revealing more and more of my undergarments. The flat side of my dagger glides across my skin in my right hand, sending a shiver up my back.
“Would you rather…touch me, then?” I ask innocently, before sliding my free hand between my legs and over the warming fabric separating my fingers from my flesh.
He jerks his head away again as if I slapped him, a muscle in his jaw flickering as he clenches his teeth.Good. I have him right where I want him.He’s much more bothered than I thought he’d be. And Gods, I can’t lie. It’s intoxicating seeing the effect I have on him. Of being in control.
Pushing up to my feet, I strut toward him as I hold the dagger at my side so he can see it. Fueled with a fire I can’t quite control, I seize the hair on the top of his head and pull his face back to look up at me.
“One way or another, Darian Raventhorn,” I rumble, tapping the tip of my dagger right where his artery pulses in his throat. “You’ll tell me. So which way is it going to be? The easy way? Or the hard way?”
His eyes dilate, his lips parted as he struggles to level his breathing. “I’d love to know what your definition of hard is.”
Slowly, I drag the dagger across his skin to nick the thin flesh, and a trickle of blood races down his throat. “Does this give you a hint?”
“You won’t know the true definition of hard until I bend you over that bed and fuck you like you need to be,” he rasps.
“Watch your tongue,” I warn, but my skin heats with desire swirling inside of me, like a thundering whirlpool just waiting to be unleashed.
“As you wish,” he purrs and leans forward, ignoring the fact I have his hair tight in my grip. He parts his lips, sticks out his tongue while watching it, and drags it up the inside of my thigh to my undergarments.
Oh. My. Gods.
The wickedly hot sensation shatters every bit of my artificial self-restraint. I freeze, my thoughts completely wiped out of my brain. His tongue is too hot, too close. And yet…not close enough.
I pull his head back before he gets too carried away, and before I’m lost to the burning need for more of the sensation, I say, rather breathlessly, “A negotiation.”
He smirks. Gods, the most sinister and tempting expression I’m hungry to keepandwipe off his face. “The terms?” he asks rather plainly.
“You tell me why the King is burning down towns.”
He tilts his head to the side. “And I get what?”
“To touch me,” I breathe.
