Page 37 of Cruelest Kiss and Fairest Blood
Harrow takes a step toward me. “What would you say if I did? Did you want to marry him?”
My stomach lurches. “No, but death?—”
Harrow moves in a blur, passing behind me, no,throughme like a gust of wind. I spin, thrusting my sword his way once more. He smacks a hand beneath the flat of my blade, knocking it from my grip. I turn to look for the spot where it landed but Harrow catches my chin, turning it so I’m forced to look up at him.
His gaze is like ice. “Death is what I am. I’ve told you this.”
I can’t tell if the goosebumps rising across my arms are the result of the midnight breeze or the pure frost in his eyes. My breathing picks up. “You’re not allowed to kill people when it isn’t their time. You told methat.”
Harrow smiles approvingly. “True. Perhaps the poison slipped in his cup by accident. I didn’t kill him. He chose to drink the wine.”
That answer is outrageous. “What if I had drunk the wine?”
An unreadable expression crosses Harrow’s face, turning his features stony. It’s quickly replaced with one of his throwaway smirks. He shrugs. “I guess we’re lucky you didn’t drink it.”
My hands strikes of its own volition. What the hell was he thinking? Why on earth would he believe I wouldn’t drink the toast at my own engagement party? He risked everything, risked my life.
A sudden darkening of the labyrinth has my tantrum train of thought screeching to a halt. I can no longer see the top of the hedges, nor any of the other maze pathways. Harrow’s face is turned to the side, still frozen where it landed as a result of my slap. The beet-red outlines of my furious fingers rise up on his cheek, ruining the luster of his alabaster skin. The muscles in his sharp jaw flex. I expect him to retaliate. What I don’t expect is for him to smile. A dark laugh creeps along my skin like a clawedcaress. It’s not a soft chuckle, it’s a deep unraveling sound that sends adrenaline peaking in my bloodstream.
He turns to face me, grinning widely. I stumble back a step.His teeth.
In place of his perfectly white smile, I now find two rows of deadly sharp fangs.Fangs.
The shimmering silver of his eyes brightens before disappearing beneath a veil of inky black. His irises vanish until the entirety of his eyes are as dark as a starless sky. He advances on me, forcing a hasty retreat. I’ve only taken two steps when my back presses against the centermost hedge. Shadows coil around him, writhing, dancing through the air in a serpentine motion.
My heart is thundering so loudly I’m sure the guards atop the wall must hear it. I glance up, searching for the closest sentry. Harrow waves his hand and my view of the sky vanishes. We’re completely shrouded in darkness, hidden from the outside world. I can see nothing but Harrow within this living hive of shadows.
There’s a quick ripping sound, and his wings burst outward, tearing his armor off with their emergence. My mouth falls open at the sight of what’s been hiding beneath his clothes. His body is as lean and cut as I imagined it would be. His muscular chest leads down to a torso that seems to go on for miles. Abs on abs ending in a pair of raised V muscles. His body is lethal in its grace as he moves toward me.
A brief flexing of his great feathered wings snaps my gaze back up to his face. How terrifying. How inexplicably beautiful. My want for him grows in tandem with my fear.
This isn’t right.
I lean into the hedge, pushing against it, wishing to fall through to the other side but knowing it won’t happen. These hedges have been growing for a hundred years or more. The thick tangling of branches and leaves doesn’t budge. Harrowwatches me, his smile growing as he notes my inability to escape. His next steps are unhurried. The distance between us is eaten up by his presence. Twigs press into my neck as I peer up at him.
He reaches a hand toward me that looks nothing like the beautiful masculine hands I’m used to. Ring-covered fingers have been replaced with black-tipped claws. That same black spreads upward, covering his hands completely, traveling up his wrists and ending in an array of smoky swirls that stop just beneath his biceps. A sudden dark shimmering draws my gaze to his face. Small, shiny feathers now line his cheekbones. The pattern leads upward, disappearing into his hairline where the icy blond of his hair vanishes, turning as endlessly dark as his eyes. Feathers mix with his hair, giving him a raven-like appearance. The same type of feathers trails up the backs of his arms from wrist to elbow.
My body tenses as those claws brush against the front of my bodice. I can tell they’re razor sharp even before they clip several of the decorative ribbons. One thrust and he could rip my wildly beating heart straight from my chest.
Muscles that have been long dormant awaken within me. My stomach clenches, thighs tightening.
This isn’t right.
Harrow’s right hand lands on my waist, gripping it.I part my lips, intending to scream for a nearby guard. The sound that leaves me makes a burning blush bleed into my cheeks. I bet I look like a tomato. I moan, a wide-mouthed, unrestrained moan. This man is transforming into a monster before my very eyes and my reaction to his twisted touch is to moan?
This. Is. So. Fucking. Not. Right.
Even as I think the words, my thighs squeeze tighter.
Harrow releases his own noise of pleasure. It’s a sound I’ve never heard before and yet, I’m certain that pleasure is exactly what it is. It’s a deep rattling that shudders out from between hisribs and travels up his throat. The sound transforms into dark laughter as he opens his fang-filled mouth.
He pushes impossibly closer, stealing my ability to breathe. Shadows branch off in every direction. From my peripherals, I can see them moving lower, but I can’t break my stare away from Harrow’s to follow their motion further. Within seconds, I canfeelwhere they’ve gone.
It starts as a soft caress on my ankles. The featherlight touch skims up my calf and slides behind my knee. My legs almost buckle as the touch presses against my inner thigh, rising ever closer to the wet, wanting spot at the top of my thighs. Harrow’s hands grip my waist tighter, pulling me against him.
His mouth dips lower, breath caressing my ear. “Were you so terribly frightened when you thought it was me who killed your beloved fiancé? Fear that traveled straight between those thighs.”
The shadows curl upward, swiping at my seam through the fabric of my panties.
