Page 52 of Master of Storms
“Enemy?” Marduk suggested, reaching for the flagon of wine and refilling her cup. “Nemesis? Lover?”
She raised a brow at him, and he smiled.
It felt like the sun rose.
It wasn’t fair. Marduk alone—with those chiseled good looks—was breathtaking. It didn’t matter where they were, he could stride into a room and suddenly everydrekimale around him vanished.
And she wasn’t the only one who noticed. Female heads turned—sometimes males too—and eyes stopped and lingered on those cut-glass cheekbones and intense golden eyes. He was not justdreki, not merely a male warrior in his prime, but aprince, and he moved as though he’d been born with the notion that everything would move out of his way.
His smile should have been considered a dangerous weapon that he could wield at will.
It bothered her how much it still affected her.
“Lover?” she repeated, disdain dripping from her voice.
“Well, I’m not entirely certain what you want of me. Sometimes you look at me like you want to cut my heart out of my chest and put it in a box, and other times you look at me as though you want to shove me back against the wall and kiss me until I can no longer breathe.” His eyelids grew lazy. “And then there was that moment in your rooms after our mating ceremony. You definitely weren’t thinking of me as your enemy then.”
“I had a knife to your throat.”
His smile softened as if he was remembering it. “I wasn’t really focusing on that, since you also had your thighs around my hips.”
Solveig growled, though her skin suddenly felt several sizes too small. “It was a sharp knife and I was going to cut your throat with it.”
“I was betweenyour thighs,” he replied with a shrug, “and you tasted like apples and cinnamon. If you say there was a knife, there was a knife, but I was a little distracted at the time.”
“I thought getting between my thighs was a certain death for a male. Something akin to… sticking your cock in a bear-trap?”
The words cut his smile from his face. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought him bothered by the past. “IsaidI was sorry. I should never have spoken those words.”
Solveig swallowed the sudden murderous urge to reach for her knife. She forced her fingers to rub the stem of her wine glass between them, instead. “It doesn’t matter.”
Silence broke between them.
Oh, the hall was merry enough, but she could feel Marduk’s eyes upon her, as if he considered her a mystery, one he was intent upon solving.
He leaned toward her, and his hand slid over hers, trapping it against the table. “I think it does matter. You wouldn’t have had me kidnapped and threatened to kill me if what I’d said didn’t get beneath your skin.”
She jerked her hand from beneath his. “I don’t allow anyone to disrespect me, Marduk. Don’t think I cried tears over you into my pillow every night.”
“Tears?” A snort. “Not tears. But anger. You funneled that hurt into rage, the way you always do.” He gave her a considering look, opened his mouth to speak, and then shook his head.
“What?” she demanded.
“It’s nothing.”
She picked up her fork and waved it at him threateningly. “Oh, please. Don’t bite your tongue now. Not for my sake. There’s nothing you could say that could infuriate me any more than what you’ve done.”
It had bothered her at the time to hear the song he’d sung in the tavern that night and realize he’d fled the court. It was everything she’d wanted of him. Freedom. No more of this nonsense of mating. No more of the threat in his eyes when he’d looked at her and she’d known he was considering her. But there was also an ugly, twisted shard of hurt within her. She didn’t care. Sheshouldn’thave cared. Her mother had always warned her that there would be males in the world who would not understand her, or the path she chose to tread.
But the knot in her chest—the one fueled of a dangerous attraction to him—had felt utterly rejected by his words.
You didn’t see me. Not truly. You said you did, but you lied.
Marduk captured her wrist, holding the fork away from his vulnerable areas, but it was the look in his eyes that made wariness envelope her.
“I was just wondering who hurt you.” He sounded the words out, as if trying to be careful of his placement of them. “Because you were angry with me from the first moment we met, and you wear it like a mantle, as if it can protect you.” His thumb caressed the inner slope of hers. “Hurt manifests in many ways. And armor can be both offensiveanddefensive. And I think that you wield your rage like a shield. Because if no one can get close to you, then no one can ever hurt you again.”
The words ricocheted through her like cannon shot.
