Page 170 of Daughter of No Worlds

This isn’t what I want.

Because that look always pierced through every lie.

And it went so far beyond a kiss, or a touch, or an embrace, or sex. If I opened that door, I would be handing her something so much deeper than that. And I knew the opposite was true, too — that I was being entrusted with something precious.

“Max?” Her fingers were at the sides of my face.

I shook my head. “No,” I murmured. “No, that isn’t what I want.”

And with those words, the tension snapped.

We both moved at once. She fell forward against me, and I slid my arms around her, pulling her closer, my mouth lowering to meet hers. First as a caress, just testing the way her lips felt against mine. Then in something deeper as we settled into the same silent language — a brush of her tongue sending a shudder up my spine, and the reply of my own teasing a tiny, wordless groan from Tisaanah’s throat.

Ascended fucking above. That sound. I decided that I could spend my whole sorry life learning new ways to coax it out of her.

I felt her lips warm into a smile. “Tent,” she whispered, though she could barely get the word out because we didn’t stop kissing long enough. “Now.”

Hell. Who was I to question?

Chapter Sixty-Two

Tisaanah

One glance from Max, and the lanterns all flickered to life at once, bathing the tent’s spare interior with a delicate orange glow. The door had hardly closed behind us before we yanked each other back into an embrace.

I had never kissed anyone like this before, and now, I never planned to stop. It was like walking into a world of color when all I’d ever seen was black and white. I loved the way he tasted — loved the way his mouth offered me long kisses and short ones, teeth occasionally claiming my lips in little, affectionate nibbles, tongue skimming mine. When his mouth moved to my cheek, I mourned it only for a moment before he trailed kisses down to my chin, to my jaw, lighting fire to my neck.

My knees were going to give out.

I — somewhat ungracefully — dropped to the ground, falling over my bedroll, Max’s hand still in mine. He followed with a movement that was far smoother, lowering himself to his knees and crawling over me. Gods, I had never seen anything so beautiful — the grace of the movement, the intensity of his focus on me. It was so wrenching that I wished I could capture the image and save it forever.

And then his weight was on top of me, and his mouth smashed against mine, and I once again lost all capacity for thought. No, I was nothing but nerves, impulses responding to his touch, back arching against his body.

My hands raked over his back. I could feel his muscles, his movements, beneath the thin cotton fabric of his shirt, but I wanted skin. I only managed three buttons before Max yanked the shirt off over his head.

“Wait,” I whispered, stopping him as he began to lower himself to kiss me again. He straightened, and I took the opportunity to justlookat him.

“Well,thisisn’t fair,” he said, raising a pointed eyebrow as his eyes fell to my shirt.

“Be patient.”

I ran light fingertip touches over the line of his shoulder, down his chest, up the other side. I paused at the scar on his left shoulder — where I had wounded him in the sparring ring. Then I trailed my hands over the lean muscle of his abdomen, across the ridges of his ribs. He let out a hissing exhale that may have started in arousal but ended somewhere closer to a hitched chuckle.

“I can’t remain appropriately seductive if you’re going to tickle me. It’s going to ruin my image.”

The scar over his ribs was longer, fresher, still mottled with angry purple. I only vaguely remembered running Il’Sahaj’s blade across his side. This wasn’t even a clean cut, the scar thick and wavy. With the rot, I’m sure that Sammerin probably had to remove all of the decayed flesh before —

“I see you, Tisaanah.” Max caught my hand in his. Then lowered himself over me and pressed his lips right between my eyebrows, where the tension of my thought had pooled. “No thinking,” he whispered, against my skin.

And just as I was about to wonder how, exactly, I was going to fulfill that request, he gave me a kiss that made it all too easy — impossibly easy — to comply.

The warmth of his body hit me through my clothing, but still—

His hand slid up my side, pausing at the button at the apex of my neckline. Waiting for silent permission.

My hands met his, tearing it off me, and then there was nothing between us but our skin.

I still could not pull him close enough. I wanted to touch him everywhere, wanted to drag my nails across every muscle.

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