Page 100 of The Stars are Dying

I snatched my hand back. Both of them. Propping myself up, my heart thumped wildly at the closeness we’d shared and the intimacy I’d so easily fallen prey to that would have had me lying there until the stars rested for dawn.

As I spun off the bed the room brightened again with the return of the amber fire. I didn’t feel the chill of the room, being so far from it as my body flushed with a heat I wanted to douse to ice, to stop feeling at all, because what was happening within me was sure to get me killed by the demon who wouldn’t leave me alone.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I closed my eyes, gathering breath to find my rational mind. Everything I needed to find out was becoming clouded by his trance. He wanted me for one thing.

“I’m not freeing you.”

A new darkness swept through the room and blew over my skin with the coolness I thought I desired. Not this kind, which rippled with danger and passion.

“Why not?” he asked in a hard tone that contained his thinning patience.

“You won’t tell me what you are or why they see you fit to be chained down there.”

Nyte laughed bitterly. I turned to him, not finding him lounging on the bed anymore, and before I sought him out my chestachedat the sight, for the only side with crumpled sheets was where I had lain. No physical trace of Nyte lingered, and I didn’t want to feel my disappointment at that fact.

“Why don’t you ask your prince?”

His voice came so near I gasped, stumbling back until I met the wall, and he closed in, planting his hands by my head.

“You’re scaring me,” I whispered.

“Yet I’m still here,” he challenged.

My mind was mocking me. Laughing and laughing, and I didn’t know what to do.

“Push me out,” he said like a dare, and I closed my eyes. “Do it, or I could kill you right here.”

A hand wrapped around my throat, snapping my eyes wide, and the gold irises that pinned me now were burned bronze. I reacted. My hands tore his wrist from me, and I shoved his chest. Hot anger and the instinct to defend myself pricked my eyes and labored my breathing.

“Don’t fucking touch me like that.”

Nyte searched me, eyes blazing. Not at what I’d done, but he’d read my response too easily. He knew why.

Humiliation threatened to cast him away and never let me surface another thought of him.

Until his expression softened. So slowly. Tentatively he closed the distance, reading my every flicker of a reaction.

I didn’t stop his approach.

His hand rose again, pausing at my throat when my whole body locked. Only when I relaxed, calming to his careful movements, did he continue.

He’s not going to hurt me.

Why was I so certain?

“It’s not the touch you fear, but the intention,” he said softly, grazing a light caress over my neck that inspired a tingling warmth instead this time. He angled his head toward mine, dipping, and my breath came shallow. Not knowing how else to release the anticipation coiling within me, I flattened my hands against the wall behind me.

“He doesn’t get to win,” Nyte said, a growl of a threat so close to my lips.

I realized his hand had encircled my throat fully and I didn’t have an inkling of fear. My fingers flexed against the cool wall from theneedtightening in my stomach, heading lower. “Nyte…” I breathed. His proximity consumed me like a fever. I wanted the press of his body and became frustrated by the lack of heat from him even though my skin was hot. My eyes fluttered to the slip of his hand around my nape as he tipped my head back, but his lips moved from hovering over mine.

“He doesn’t get to take this from you.”

I drew breath as the ghost of a kiss was pressed to my neck instead. My pulse raced. Desire tingled, and I wanted—

My eyes snapped open to the grip of loneliness, my chest heaving as I sank to my knees.

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