Page 60 of Stars in Umbra
It was recognition, a flash of a long-buried and half-remembered memory.
He got hit with a ghost of hooves on hard-packed earth.
The scent of hay and sweet grass, a soft, warm voice speaking to him.
And the steady, patient gaze of stallions peering at him over the edge of a stall.
The fragmented image slipped past before he grasped it, and he turned from her, shaking his head, forcing his focus onto the drink in his hand.
He moved to the bar, clearing his throat, his fingers reaching for the familiar, grounding ritual of ice and the half-empty bottle of violet liqueur.
The rhythm was a comfort he had always relied on: pour, stir, flame, a twist of citrus peel.
Yet, her words lingered in the quiet space between them.
Her smile haunted him, even as her description of the horse farm cracked open a raw aching inside him, as if a truth was rising to the surface.
One he kept buried for decades.
He was about to seize the memory, to finally understand the feeling stirring at the edge of his mind, when the air around him shifted.
She came to him, her heels clicking a soft, rhythmic beat across the lounge floor.
Before he could speak, she was beside him, taking the glass from his hand.
She raised it to her lips and drained the contents in a single, fluid motion, her mouth wet with the scent of citrus and heat.
Mo arched a brow.Fokk, she was ready to let loose.
Shedding the tight skin of command and control, she was casting off the strain of endless negotiation, the burden of military tact, and the suffocating weight of wartime tension.
For one night, she was dropping her barriers, and he welcomed it with an intensity that bordered on reverence.
Her enticing floral perfume flooded his senses, a heady, intoxicating mix that erased all other thought.
She didn’t say a word.
Instead, she reached down, her fingers curling around his hand with a firm grip, and led him away from the bar.
The second her hand slid into his and tugged him, silent and sure, all safeguards snapped away.
Thought dissolved, all control scattered.
He prowled in her wake like a storm tethered to lightning, following her out of the private suite, down the grand staircase, and toward the elevator.
Whatever thoughts he’d had, even the haunted memory, burned away under the heat of her nearness.
All that existed in that moment was her hand in his.
And, the elegant curve of her back just ahead of him, and the intoxicating promise.
She didn’t have to turn around to confirm her claim on him.
Mo was already hers.
12
An All-Consuming Fire
