Breath buckling in an accordion bellow, I stare at him, not in fear, but in recognition as the beast in me rises up and answers to the beast inside him.
All twenty-four of my ribbons lurch to attention. They become charged with energy, as if they’ve felt the erratic spike of his magic and are answering in kind.
Yet instead of them lashing out at him like they did with Midas, they form a cocoon, like they’re creating another layer upon his aura that’s already surrounding us. These parts of ourselves feel so alive. So decadent.
“Look at me.” My voice is stoic, unafraid, even as his body struggles to hold its form.
His green and black flashing eyes latch onto me, hypnotic in their frenetic oscillation. I don’t know what would happen if he were to rupture, but power flows from him and pounds in the air. This time, it doesn’t make me want to vomit. Instead, it’s like a singing siren, and I want nothing but to be lured in.
“Can you feel that?” I whisper as my hand rises to his chest, my open palm connecting with the chiseled muscles over his racing heart.
The moment my touch settles against him, Slade’s eyes bleed back to a forest of green, like the needles of a pine appearing out of the dark. My breath catches, his heart beating beneath my palm in a rhythm that seems to match the push in my veins.
His touches I’ve savored have coalesced into the one I now press against him. And as innocent as it may seem, it’s somehow intimate.
“Your heartbeat…”
“What about it?” His tone is hoarse, breath gone ragged.
“It sounds like mine.”
Twin beats pulse, just as two tears rip down my cheeks in perforated anguish. Because I can hear it, this perfect harmony, like a hum of sun and soil, of depth and rise. But the moment is tainted, cheapened, because I had my head pressed to another’s chest, hearing a song that wasn’t singing for me. So how can I trust what I hear?
“Auren.”
My shining eyes rise up, and I fleetingly note the spikes sinking back beneath his skin and the scales disappearing from his cheeks. I start to pull my hand away, because I suddenly feel so undeserving of the touch. Yet before I can, his hand comes up to trap mine, and he holds it there as he watches me with an intensity that I can’t fathom.
“You’re warm,” he murmurs.
I nod, feeling the heat circling from my palm, dipping into the soft fabric of his shirt, sinking into the hard chest beneath. The drag of his calloused thumb against the back of my hand shouldn’t feel sensual, but it does.
Heat drips down from my navel, settling between my thighs and making my muscles go tight. His fingernail scrapes against my knuckle, an abraded edge of nearness that carries the hint of a need to dig in deep. Right then, I want to let him. To peel my layers open so he can get to what lies beneath.
“He hit you.” Slade grinds out the words, each one spoken from sharp back teeth.
Midas has done far more than that, but emotional assault doesn’t leave any marks on the skin.
Lines of power snap against Slade’s jaw like miniature vipers, and my gaze follows their insipid movements. “How long has he been doing this?”
“That was the first time.”
He looks wholly unconvinced. “And at the dinner table?”
“What about it?” I hedge.
“There was a moment when your expression changed. Was he hurting you then?”
“Just a pinch.” I don’t dare hint that the just a pinch was more than one, or that they left such dark bruises on my skin that they’re still sore to the touch. The only good thing about Midas’s physical assault is that he’s left me alone since then.
“He won’t ever touch me again,” I declare, because I already made that promise to myself.
Something boils inside of Slade, burning so hot that my hand sears beneath his. “You asked me why I don’t just kill him,” he says, his hard, pitiless eyes hooked on my face. “But why don’t you?”
I blink in surprise as he throws my question back in my face, and my ribbons wilt, falling onto the floor like plucked petals.
His finger comes up to skim against my cheek, and even though he doesn’t lose control again, he’s no less angry.
“Since the moment I arrived in Fifth Kingdom, I’ve thought about little else other than ripping him to shreds with my bare hands. But do you know what stops me?” he asks, his thumb still caressing, our beats still in rhythm. “More than politics and potential world wars.”
I don’t want to ask, but I do anyway. “What?”