Page 105 of The King is Dead
Inspiration hit, and as I ran deep enough into the gardens to be hidden from view of the others racing back to the Palace, I turned mid-step and changed trajectory.
She’d be guarded and watched. Protected.
I couldn’t risk them holding me back from her. I’d end up tearing out a throat.
So I took the long route around the palace walls, through the gardens, to the other side of the royal wing and launched myself straight into the air, flapping a dozen times to get myself high enough, aiming for that gilded cage of a balcony she had outside her rooms, landing on top of it like a bird of prey, and wrenching one of the iron and bronze screens back, grunting as I exerted enough effort to bend it wide enough away from the top wall to allow me entry, then dropped onto the stone balcony with a thud, panting.
“What thefuck?!”
Yilan rushed out, eyes wide and shining with unshed tears. She was still wearing that stunningclothand here in the half-light from the lamps in her room, I could see every inch of her form.
“God, Yilan,” I rasped, descending on her as she gasped my name and threw herself across the balcony and into my chest.
She grunted with the impact as I swept her up, taking her mouth in a teeth-clashing kiss as my soul shoved me to her.
There was no time, no words. I could sense her. Feel her. Terror shook her heart and made her blink away tears, but her need was greater.
She felt it, just like me. The draw. The magnetism.
She wasmine.
“Melek! Thank God!”
Her fingers clawed into my hair, taking a grip on my warrior’s length and holding me into the kiss as I dove for her mouth.
I held her to my chest, turning, then striding towards the door, but before I reached it her tongue twirled around mine, and her knees drew up, around my waist.
“Mine,” I growled. “You cannot even consider them, Yilan.You’re mine!”
She locked her ankles behind my back and gasped, “It’s you. It’s only you!”
With a tormented howl, I turned her, slamming us up against the external wall, just feet from her door. The soft fabric of her dress caught on the rough stone, snagging and tearing—which suited me. I was clawing at her clothes, ripping the neckline down and away as Yilan’s head dropped back. She dragged clawed nails down my back and urged me on as I tore through the leather strapping covering her breasts with my teeth.
When those black lengths fell away, baring her to me. Desire jangled, an electric crackle in my blood as I stared down at her.
“So fucking beautiful. I couldn’t look away. Yilan, my mate—dearGod!”
I sucked in a breath to roar, but she grabbed the back of my head and pulled me down, swallowing my grunts and cries.
We struggled and writhed, unable to get close enough because the contraption around her was frustratingly tight and kept her from truly embracing me with her legs.
Finally, with a curse, I grabbed the lowest layer of it around her thighs—currently bent over my hip—and yanked up, sliding four layers of leather up until it slackened around her narrower waist, leaving raked lines on her skin, but both of us groaning with relief when she could finally relax against me.
“Yilan, I—”
“Don’t wait!” she gasped, already seeking me with her hips and pulling my head down.
Wrestling with my leathers, it took me a few seconds to free myself, during which Yilan was frantic, clawing at my back and gasping my name. But then finally I was free, and she wasright there.
Slapping a hand to the wall behind her, I pulled her thigh tighter around my waist and thrust into her in a single, forceful taking that was almost violent in its need. But Yilan’s head tipped back against the wall, her lips stretched into a smile as she gasped.
“Yes…yes!”
I was frantic, unable to control the rabid growls and animalistic grunts breaking in my throat as I took her again and again, gripping her shoulder and pulling her down to meet my driving thrusts.
She gasped and whimpered, her eyes rolling back in her head, her lips moving with broken, harsh cries as she pleaded for me, over and over.
I didn’t know what the fuck had happened back there, but I had toownher. To brand her withme.Like that dark force was trying to tear us apart again, but this time there was no sensation, no pulling. Only the deep, abiding sense that if I did not have herright then,she would be taken from me.
