It was as if she had a sudden fever. She even felt weak.
But not, she understood in the next moment, in any way ill.
And there would never be a better time than this. So much for attempting seduction, she thought. Fen was right. She was terrible at it. It was high time she tried a more direct approach.
Following an urge so overwhelming it hurt, Melody closed that last, scant bit of space between them and pressed her lips to his.
She remembered their perfunctory kiss at the altar. She’d had the impression of firmness, maleness, but that was all.
This was different.
Griffin went still. Radically still.
And she could feel the heat in him, all that marvelous, leashed power, while he held himself back as if he was afraid of hurting her. Or overwhelming her.
Melody, on the other hand, was not afraid at all.
She slid her hands up to loop them around the strong column of his neck.
And then...she played.
Once, when she’d been a teenager, she’d kissed one of the statues that lined the atrium in her father’s house. Because it was shaped like a man, and Calista had told her about kissing. Melody had wanted to know what it was like.
She remembered the cool marble. The impenetrable seam between those fine, chiseled lips.
This was like that and not like that at all.
Because Griffin was alive. Hard, yes, but not like marble.
He was so much better than stone.
So she entertained herself. She kissed him, angling her head this way, then that. But it was not until she slipped her tongue against that same seam, just to taste him better, that she shuddered.
“You have no idea how to kiss, do you?” His voice was raw. A scrape against the night, and deep into her, too.
“Teach me,” she whispered.
Griffin made another one of those low, shockingly male noises that made everything inside her burn hotter. While between her legs, she felt slippery.
His hands moved from her shoulders and she protested that with a little noise, but only until he took her face between his palms.
Then Prince Griffin, Idylla’s favorite scourge, set his mouth to hers.
And devoured her.
It was like falling. It was like tumbling through space, caught up in the waves of the sea and tossed this way and that, but it didn’t ever end.
What he did to her mouth bore no resemblance to the kisses she’d given him, sweeping them away in a blaze of fire.
Griffin used his tongue, his teeth. He ate at her mouth, sometimes making more of those lush, dirty sounds that made her ache. That made this strange fever burn hotter, leaving her weaker and desperate for more.
Melody’s life was built around sensation. What she could touch, what she could feel.
Nothing had ever prepared her for this.
For a mouth on hers, the scrape of his tongue, and the glory of the flames that licked all over her.
She was made new. She was forever changed.
She met the thrust of his wicked tongue, pressing herself against him with sheer, heady abandon, because every touch made it better. Hotter.
So much wilder and all-consuming than she’d ever imagined.
And she thought she might be perfectly happy to die like this—
But he stopped.
Griffin tore his mouth from hers, and then rested his forehead there, pressed against hers. It was a new spark. A different, quieter fire.
“I don’t want to stop,” she managed to pant out, surprised to hear she sounded as out of breath as if she’d just survived one of Fen’s more brutal training sessions.
She could feel the change in his body, in the way he held her. He set her away from him, as if he was deliberately creating space. And then maintaining it.
“That should never have happened,” he said, stiffly.
But Melody could hear what lay beneath it. All that same heat that was still storming through her, still making her burn with that wildfire that was only his. Why would anyone step away from that?
“Why ever not?” she asked, genuinely confused. “Aren’t we supposed to be married?”
Griffin was turning her when she didn’t wish to be turned. But there was no fighting it unless she intended to truly fight, so she allowed it. He tucked her hand back in his elbow and then, suddenly, he was walking her across the courtyard at a brisk pace he’d never used before.
As if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her.
Melody didn’t like the way that notion twisted around inside her.
“Am I to take the silence as an indication that we are not, in fact, married?” she asked tartly.
And as she did, wondered when exactly it was she’d last pretended to be the wife the King and her own sister had asked her to be. When had she last cowered or cringed?
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not now.
Not when she could taste him.
Griffin did not speak again until he’d marched her to the door of her room.
“That should not have happened,” he said again. Stiffly. Formally. Annoyingly. “It will not happen again. You have my word.”
“I don’t want your word.”
“Nonetheless, it is yours. I keep my promises, Melody.” She could hear the storm in him then, dark and ferocious. It made her heart clench tight in her chest. “Whatever else might be true about me, I keep my promises.”
“As good men do,” she whispered, though she shouldn’t have.
Griffin made a low noise, but he did not reply. Instead, he turned swiftly and left her there, half fire and half fury, to burn out on her own.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE WIFE HE’D never wanted and shouldn’t have noticed much now he had her...was driving him mad.
It was the morning of New Year’s Eve. As was his time-honored tradition, Griffin was chasing out the old year with the kind of punishing workout he usually reserved for whipping himself into shape after disappearing into too much debauchery for too long. Who could have predicted that a spate of abstinence would make the particular punishment he doled out to
