Page 99 of The Nightmare Bride
I whimpered. The ceiling oozed fingers of shadow, but I steered my attention away, back to Ky.
“Where’s the line?” he murmured.
“Don’t kiss me,” I said. An inch, a mile, and all that. Because even here, even in the midst of all this, I knew he had to marry Amryssa. “Just...touch me. Please. Lick my neck, like you did on our wedding night. And talk to me. I know you don’t have feelings, but...maybe pretend like you do. Just for tonight.”
“Oh, I have feelings.” He made a thrumming sound deep in his throat. “When it comes to you, I have plenty, as it turns out. Tender ones. Awestruck ones. Filthy ones. Ones that tell me I need to taste this place beneath your ear again.”
His mouth descended, gifting my neck with liquid heat, and I loosed a moan that sounded like a thousand voices all begging at once.
Around us, the nightmare shrieked, but Ky was doing that thing with his tongue again, the one I’d dreamed about, and I couldn’t be bothered to care.
“Gods,” he murmured between strokes of his tongue. “Sometimes I want you so badly I can hardly see straight.”
Longing swelled, lacing my veins with fire. “Only sometimes?”
He chuckled and kissed a path down to my collarbone. “No, always. It’s like I told you when we met. There’s something captivating about you. And that feeling’s only gotten worse.”
He tongued my collarbone, plucking another involuntary cry from my throat. He glanced up, his look devilish. “Hmm. I do believe you like that.”
“I hate that,” I said, wanton now. Pleading. “I hate everything about it.”
“Mmm. What about this?”
He sucked hard enough to make my spine arc. “Even worse,” I croaked.
The suction only increased, driving a lightning-tipped spear into the base of my stomach. I writhed beneath him. How bizarreand wonderful that I could feel his attentions in a place he hadn’t even touched.
He lifted his mouth and circled my neck with his hand again. He didn’t squeeze, just rested his fingers there, the suggestion of force held in check. “Tell me.” He hovered, staring into my eyes. “How badly do you want to put a dagger to my throatthistime? Scale of one to ten?”
“Eleven,” I managed. “Definitely an eleven.”
His mouth twitched. “Well, at least I get a reaction.”
Goddess, did he ever. It was all I could do not to tilt my chin up and nip at his bottom lip—it waited like a juicy berry, just begging to be bitten into. But that would have opened a whole new door onto a whole new set of problems, ones that didn’t need visiting tonight any more than whatever confession he’d tried to offer in the swamp.
Ones that hopefully didn’t need visitingever, though I was starting to worry I wouldn’t last four more days. Sometimes, I didn’t think I’d last four more minutes.
My arms flexed, my wrists yanking against their chains as my body slipped from my control. The nightmare battered at me, demanding to be let in.
Kyven angled his forehead against mine. “Not yet. Stay with me.”
I nodded. “I’m trying. Talk to me?”
“About?”
“Anything,” I said. “Tell me something I don’t know. About you.”
“Something you don’t know. Hmm. How about...I think about you all the time. Did you know that?”
“I meant somethingtrue.”
“That is true.” His lashes fanned across his cheeks as his attention dropped to my mouth. “There I’ll be, chopping wood, or milking the cows, or sifting through some terminally boringbook at your behest, and some part of my mind never lets you fade into the background. You’re always there, on some level. Like a candle that never burns down.”
“Really?”
“Truly.”
My throat thickened. “And what do you think about? When you think about me?”
