Hard hands clamp around my waist, and Keir shoves me back against the door. “Let them,” he breathes, but some part of his power must catch on the words, because I shiver as they etch themselves in my ears. “I can tear this fucking court apart stone by stone if I will it.”
“Because she threatened me? Believe it or not, my prince, it’s not the first time I’ve had my back against the wall. It won’t be the last.”
“Because she dared curse you,” he spits. “You. My bride. Under my protection. It’s a threat against you, it’s a mockery of me, and it will not be tolerated.”
Ah, now I understand.
A male’s oath of protection is like his cock. You do not mock the size of it, you do not suggest it can’t handle itself, and you certainly don’t laugh in the face of it.
Belladonna just did all three, metaphorically. By cursing me, she’s suggesting she doesn’t find Keir’s power and status threatening.
Which is possibly a huge mistake, I note, as the muscles in his forearms flex.
“If you kill her, then we lose our chance at the horn,” I warn.
“Fuck. The. Horn,” he enunciates very clearly, a strange light in his eyes.
Heat bleeds out of me. I can’t lose this chance. I can’t. If Keir ruins this entire situation because of some sort of overweening fae arrogance, then I’m dead.
“Don’t you dare.” I grab another fistful of his cloak and realize I’ve got it all bunched around his throat. “Stop thinking with your pride. Whoever gets the horn has the power to find the cauldron. I know she insulted you, but—”
“Insulted me?”
It’s like trying to wrestle a runaway carriage that outweighs me by a thousand pounds. “Yes,” I hiss. “I’m the one with the curse looming over their head. So you can take your territorial foot stomping and put a fucking leash on it.”
He freezes.
It’s not, as immediately suspected, an improvement in the situation.
Keir captures my chin in one hand. “Let me be perfectly clear since you seem to be leaping to the wrong conclusions. I don’t give a fuck about the insult, or my pride, or any of this so-called territorial foot stomping. If she snaps that curse shut then you are dead. And I will not have that.”
I suffer a moment where I have no fucking idea what that means.
And then it comes crashing down on me.
He’s… angry because he thinks I’m going to get hurt.
“Because you won’t be able to find the horn,” I whisper, trying to reel in all my conflicting feelings.
His thumb strokes the curve of my neck. “Oh, Zemira. The lies you tell yourself…. Yes,” he hisses, pressing closer. “Because I need you to find the horn. Because if she steals you from my side, she’s insulting me. Because this is a game, and all I care about are the whims of foolish little fae princes. Do any of them feel like the truth?”
I can’t look away from him. His eyes blaze and I realize I have a furious dragon by the collar, and I don’t know how to defuse the situation, because I truly don’t know why he’s so angry.
He must see it in my eyes. “I will kill her because this is not the first time she’s dared attack you. Last night can be forgiven—she didn’t know who you were. But now she has no excuse. I will kill her because you are mine and she hurt you. I will kill her because I promised myself I would protect you. No matter what the cost.”
Kill her? My eyes widen. Mine? What is this?
“Stay here,” he says, trying to push me aside. “I will be back.”
He’s going to ruin everything and in so doing, cast me to the wolves. Or, to be more precise, my father’s lack of mercy.
There’s only one thing to do—
I kiss him.
There’s a moment of stillness as if I caught him by surprise. Hands lock around my forearms as if he seeks something to steady him.
And then, it’s as though he surrenders utterly to the sensation. Keir kisses me hard, shoving me back against the door, his soft mouth claiming me. His tongue lashes against mine, the stone wall of his chest pressed firmly against me.
I knew his body was carved of pure marble by some long-ago artisan who conjured him into flesh, but the sensation of it…. All that muscular flesh pressing me into the door, grinding me there until we’re practically struggling for breath and surrender, steals my wits.
Maybe we aren’t the ones fighting—maybe we were fighting our own desires—because it feels as though desperation twines itself through my body.
I need to kiss him.
I need his hands on my skin.
His tongue in my mouth.
I need this like I need air. Or water.
He kissed me once, his oath biting into my lips and drawing blood. At the time I was frightened and reeling, and though the memory of that kiss has replayed itself a thousand times over in my head, it wasn’t entirely something enjoyable.
But now I’m not thinking about pain, or oaths, or stopping him.
Now all I can taste is his mouth.
That hard, relentless mouth that tastes like all manner of sin. I can taste apples on his tongue, tart and sweet, and his hands slide down my hips, capturing my ass in both hands as he hauls me up, driving into the welcoming embrace of my hips.
A gasp tears loose from my ragged throat. I should stop this right now. This is dangerous, like throwing oil on a fire, but I can’t. Just a second more. Another second. I’m stealing seconds and drowning in the passion of his claim.
Keir doesn’t just kiss me.
He steals my breath, my thoughts, my tremulous heart… and if I’d had my soul, I think
