Page 22 of Stealing Samantha

“I’m your fate?” She moved closer, hoping her voice would carry. She couldn’t manage to speak loudly. The words felt like a secret, something that should be whispered.

“I thought so.” He turned around then, looking even more otherworldly than usual. He was a creature of tropical color, every shade that shone in his scales and feathers plucked from the lush jungle from which he came, and here he was, set upon this place of ice and snow. Somehow the contrast made him appear even more beautiful, heightening the intensity of his features.

“You’re not sure anymore?” She shouldn’t push and prod.Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answers, Samanatha.

“No.” The word trembled, deep, rough, quiet thunder.

“Is it because of what happened last night?” She’d come even nearer without realizing it. She had to look up to meet his eyes, her nose level with his chest. She wanted to touch him, to reach up and place her palms over him as if that would keep him in place until he gave her all the answers she needed.

“Yes. I was foolish. I thought that because you no longer flinched at the sound of my feathers that you might be able to forget. I carried you that night in Vastiss, took in your scent, learned the shape of you in my arms. I didn’t understand how badly he’d hurt you—your false mate. I should never have come.”

Sam hated hearing those words from him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, tucking her hands beneath the base of his wings, and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Please don’t say that. Don’t let him take this from me, too.”

She held him too tightly, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go. Sam looked up at him, and she couldn’t imagine ever having thought that they looked alike. Jaess’ scales may have been the dark jade of Uvaess’, but that was the only similarity. The generous curve of his mouth, the clear, pale green of his eyes, the nose that had what her mother would have called “character”—all of it added up to a face she would never forget again.

She’d never let fear stop her before Uvaess; she wouldn’t allow it to take Jaess from her now. Sam rose up on her toes, sliding her hands up the sides of his body, pulling him down to meet her. She needed to taste him, to know what made him distinctly Jaess. She crushed her mouth to his, bold and messy. She felt the drag of his fangs against her lips and she liked it, just like the shape of his forked tongue tangling with her own brought a flash of heat racing down her body.

She’d avoided this, worried that those unearthly parts of him would repulse her, that the feelings she had for him would crumble in the face of their physical differences, but she’d been wrong. So blessedly, wondrously wrong.

The heavy thrum of his rattle transferred to her body through the thick layers of fabric that covered his chest. The vibrations danced up his tongue, and kissing him became like swallowing down a song, a mirror of what they did every night on those stages. He was copper and metal and alien air, unlike anything she’d ever known, and it mixed with her sweetness, at once foreign and familiar. All she could taste was the flavor of them together, and she couldn’t tell if they truly moved on the ice, or if the motion was only in her mind. She didn’t want to come up for air when the world was so beautiful without it.

Sam raked her hands through his feathers, wishing she wasn’t wearing gloves. She wanted to feel their stiffness, their satiny texture between her fingers. She wanted to know that she’d claimed each part of him that she’d rejected on Uvaess, and that she’d found it good.

He pressed his forehead against hers.Thatshe could feel—scales to skin. They shared the cold air between them, only the barest space between their lips. “Sam,” he whispered in that voice that carried storms and stars in its depths.

“Don’t regret it. Don’t regret coming for me. I don’t think I could bear it,” she told him.

She felt his broken laugh hit her mouth. She shared it with him.

“I could never—never regret this,” he said.

And then he was the one to kiss her. She had only the barest glimpse of the mountains, forbidding and dark beneath their lacy mantle of snow, and then they faded away, replaced by the taste, the feel, the intoxicating dance that was Jaess.

13

Sam didn’t seethe sunset. She didn’t feel the cold. The drive back was an evergreen blur of white noise, just the thump of his pulse against hers, wrist to wrist. When they arrived at the hotel, they left the others behind beside the transport as he pulled her inside and then towards his room. A cursory glance showed that it was empty, and then Jaess pushed the door shut and slammed the deadbolt home.

“Are you certain?” He asked even as he stripped off his mangled outwear, shaking off the snow as he did so.

“Entirely,” she replied, shedding her own jacket, flinging her hat and gloves onto the armchair in the corner. She unzipped her boots and pulled off layer after layer, until she shivered, not a thread left to cover her.

He was staring. His wings pulsed outwards like they had their own heartbeat. He couldn’t have looked more Lisseethi if he’d tried. She could call him Jay, but he was all Xithilene, and nothing could change that. He must’ve kicked off his shoes. His feet were bare, his chest naked but for the thin tangled chains of gold nestled below his collarbone. She saw the green gleaming of his birthstone amid the knotted metal, the perfect reflection of those sharp eyes. He wore only those pants, the ones that looked as if they’d been designed expressly for his perfect body, and for all she knew, they had.

His over-large wings spread out behind him, and she didn’t think he realized he’d done it. He was always so careful with her when he wasn’t dancing, so insufferably aware of the vulnerable points dotting her psyche, so reluctant to push. Right now she didn’t want that caution between them. She wanted the full, unleashed complexity of him, all of his desire and hunger without barriers.

“You’re gorgeous, Jay.”

Maybe she should have felt self-conscious, walking up to him bare as the day she was born, her body not so perfect by a long shot, but she had no room in her mind for useless doubts. Sam came up to his left side and did what she’d imagined earlier at the lake. She stretched out her arm, reaching up, up, up until she could touch the ridged line of bone along the top of his extended wing. She traced her way over the smooth, curved talon, feeling the soft vibration as he worked to remain still beneath her fingertips. The light fluttering of his feathers betrayed him. He couldn’t hide what she did to him.

She spread her hand and trailed it over them like she was drifting her fingers over the surface of the ocean, luxuriating in the gentle pressure against her hand, yet not daring to plunge too deep. His feathers were stained glass satin, costume fantasy yet so much more, a living part of him as integral as his hands, his taut stomach, his thumping pulse. She wanted to taste it, to press her mouth over that place where his blood beat against the thin scales of his neck. Sam turned, sliding her back into the silken cocoon of his wing. Her hair slid against the barbs, weaving them together in the subtlest way. His feathers started to shake, and she knew he wanted to clutch her close, to pin her against his body, holding her down beneath the strength of his wing. She knew he wouldn’t.

She turned again, tumbling into his embrace as if they’d choreographed it. She took a moment to savor the feel of him, the lovely slide of his scales as she moved against him, knowing the velvety softness of her own skin, experiencing her beauty as if she’d never recognized it before. It seemed as if together they always became more, each of them the mirror that brought the brilliance of the sun, the whisper of perfection, down over the other.

Her hands smoothed over his firm hips, closing around the hard, leather encased muscle that powered those heart-stopping jumps, that made him the beautiful predator he was. She didn’t need to be in his forest to see how he must’ve moved there, gliding like a shadow but too extraordinary to ever blend into the dark with those light stained feathers. He was hard against her, pressing against her stomach behind the closure of his pants.

She sucked a kiss to the deep line marking a trail down the center of his body, that snaked between the sleek muscle of his chest and stomach. He made one of his storm soaked noises low in his throat, a rolling thrum she felt down to the soles of her feet, and his hands came around her, threading through her hair and landing firmly on her back. She felt him laugh against the crown of her head, warm and breathy. Then he pulled her up, her legs parting instinctively as he brought her tight against him. Her feet locked around his lower back, the downy feathers there tickling her toes.

“Jay, Jaess,” she breathed out as each step he took towards the bed had his scaled stomach shifting against the most sensitive parts of her. She gasped down the moan that wanted to throb its way free. They fell back onto the bed. Her weight settled onto the mattress, but he held himself above her. “Come here,” she said, slipping her fingers beneath the chains at his neck and curling them so she could pull him back down.

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