Page 90 of Master of Storms
Her eyes narrowed. “You would be a terrible king.”
He drew back as if slapped. “Pardon?”
The first few drops of rain slapped against her skin. “You think with your heart instead of your head—”
“I was trying to—”
“Apologize. Yes, I know.”I know. But where did that leave her? Solveig paced. “Goddess, you’re so arrogant. Youstolemy future? My future is in my hands, Marduk, and while you humiliated me once, you had nothing to do with the rest of my life choices.”
His shoulders straightened, rain slicking the soft linen of his shirt to his golden skin. “I wasn’t trying to say I did—”
“And if I chose to pursue the promise in Draco’s eyes?” She turned on him. “Then make no mistake. I would. But quite frankly, maledrekihave done enough damage to my life already. Why would I wish to saddle myself with another one? One is enough, and it seems I can’t even get rid of him.”
“I’ll wear the first part of that, but if you’d truly wished to get rid of me, you could have done so long ago.”
“Unfortunately, you seem to keep tangling yourself in my life.”
His hand splayed over the wall beside her head, and he leaned closer, caging her in with his proximity. “Do I? Because I seem to recall that you hadmedragged back to your court in chains.”
Her fist clenched. “Vengeance—”
“Is the excuse you keep throwing in my face, but I’m not entirely certain it’s the truth.”
“And what do you think the truth is? That I was pining for you? That I desired you so much I couldn’t let you go?”
The words left her breathless.
Because shehadn’tbeen able to let him go, and she still didn’t understand why.
“Ask me,” he demanded. “Ask me for a secret.”
Solveig leaned back against the wall, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the overwhelming press of his scent.
“Fine,” she grated out. “Tell me a secret.”
Marduk’s eyes turned molten, and his gaze dropped to her lips. “I would have chosen you. That first time, I would have chosen you.”
Solveig sucked in a sharp breath.
“If you want to know the truth”—his voice roughened as he captured her face in his hand, his thumb rasping over her cheek—“I could no sooner have chosen one of your sisters as my mate than I could have stopped breathing. My fierce, sweet nemesis. It was you. It’s always been you, from the moment I laid eyes upon you that first time.”
The mess of emotion churning within her pushed her right to the edge. “You had no intentions of being mated. Youtoldme that.”
“No,” he told her, rivulets of rain sliding down his face and dripping from the bottom of his chin. “I wasn’t ready to be mated. I was furious at my mother. I couldn’t see the opportunity before me. And yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were everything I shouldn’t have wanted, all wrapped up in a body that still makes me ache.”
His hand reached out, stopping just above her clavicle. His fingers trembled and Solveig stared up at him, fighting the urge to flee.
“You hated me from the moment you saw me, and I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve such hate,” he whispered. “And the stupidest thing was that I didn’t care. If my mother hadn’t tried to kill me, I think I would have stayed. I would have chosen you. I wanted to kiss you so much I ached with it—”
There.
His fingertips grazed her skin.
And it was too much. Her heart erupted like a stampeding herd of cattle.
Today’s kiss had been wild need. A game. A taunt.
This was something else entirely, and she couldn’t escape it.
