Page 140 of A Vow of Embers

His expression changed. “I will not share you with any man. You belong to me. The sooner you realize that, the better. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

“You have no claim over me.” I did not mean the words I was saying. My body wanted him. Only him.

“I have the only claim that matters.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I will kiss whoever—”

He swallowed my words with his mouth, angrily bruising my lips. This was so much like a fight—excitement laced with a giddy kind of fear, anticipation, dread mixed with thrills. Flesh meeting flesh, the surge of adrenaline, not wanting to back down. Determined not to lose. I had provoked him into this reaction and I reveled in it. He made me so weak and desperate, but I gloried in the fact that I could do the same to him.

I gripped his hair tightly, holding him to me. I wasn’t going to let him go. He moaned when I tugged, his body hard and hot against mine. I didn’t care about anything else but kissing him, holding him. I never wanted it to stop. Our mouths met messily, our teeth clacking, both of us wanting to devour. We were so frantic for each other.

He carried me across the room, kissing me the entire time. He tried to put me on the bed, but I wouldn’t let go of his neck, so he lowered both of us down while I clung to him. Our mouths were fused together with a violent desperation, fierce and wild.

The night of the festival, there had been this kind of passion, but he had also been gentle and careful with me. There was none of that now.

He plundered my swollen and sensitized mouth ruthlessly, kissing me hard. I felt his frustration and anger, his desire and lust. How much he wanted me. It made me dizzy. There was so much tension in his body, his breathing turned ragged. I matched his fervor—licking, sucking, kissing, biting. I tasted the salt on his throat, how the cords in his neck strained under my kisses. I felt and heard his feral growl when my teeth sank into the spot where his shoulder met his neck, just as I had the lasttime we were together, my own skin burning in the same spot. I would mark him. The world would know that he belonged to me.

As his hands moved over me, stroking and roughly squeezing, I couldn’t stop making throaty, desperate moans of pleasure. A hot tension was building, relentless, as he utterly unleashed himself on me. It was too much and somehow not enough.

Then it suddenly stopped, forcing me to open my eyes to see what he was doing. He hovered over me, looking down with an expression I didn’t recognize.

His tone was harsh. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you don’t want this.”

“I do hate you,” I said breathily, moving my hands to his waist as I tried to tug him down to me. “I hate you so much it consumes me.”

He gave me a wicked smile. “You may hate me, but your body does not.”

“That’s why I don’t let it make the decisions.” I didn’t even know what I was saying.

“I think you’ve lost that argument,” he responded as he gave me what I wanted, pressing me down into the bed. He ghosted his lips along my collarbone, moving my tunic out of the way so that he could kiss and nip at my shoulder.

The same shoulder where I still had the burned seal of the goddess. I shuddered when he traced the raised outline with his tongue. I melted and melted, like a wax candle that had been accidentally thrown into a roaring fire.

“Xander.” I breathed out his name, pleading with him. Why wasn’t he kissing me? I needed it.

I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to wait. Didn’t have to let him direct how things would go. I could take what I wanted. I grabbed him and rolled us over.

He looked slightly surprised but I knew it was something else that he had permitted. A satisfied, arrogant smile settled on his face and I wanted to kiss it off.

I straddled him and his strong, warm hands were on my thighs, stroking them.

“Take it off,” I told him. I needed to touch his skin, to feel it against mine without any clothing in the way. The way we did the morning after our wedding. I watched as he did as I commanded, his hands moving to his belt to untie it. He loosened it and my breath solidified in my chest as I waited.

“Lift up,” he said lowly and I did so. He pulled his tunic up and over his head, throwing it somewhere behind us. I had to hold in a groan when I saw his chest. I settled back onto him. My hands ached to touch him—there was an incessant, overwhelming urge to do so. I let myself trace the outline of his muscles, listened to his stuttered breathing, felt his eyes on me. I bent down to kiss and lick everywhere that my fingers had touched. His entire body seemed to hum with tension, his hands moving reflexively over me, like he no longer had control of them.

Then his hand was on my neck, crashing my lips into his. I ground myself against him, over and over, discovering an exquisite pleasure. I was alight with embers of desire as my core fluttered. I was shaking, overcome. A tautness pooled hot and low in my stomach, a pressure that welled.

“Lia.” My body instinctively responded to the way he said my name, the desperation and longing I heard.

When I looked into his eyes, he tugged at my tunic and said, “Your turn. May I?”

Without hesitation I said, “Yes.”

And my immediate agreement, my consent, did something strange to him. His face went slack. Then, with a determined expression, he uttered, “I will not. I will not!”

He picked me up by the waist and deposited me on the bed. He stood and went over to grab his tunic, yanking it back on. It hung loosely on him.

I was utterly confused while my heart raged in my chest. I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. He walked over to the open balcony doors, staring out into the night.

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