Page 100 of The Hunted

He caught her quivering chin between his forefinger and thumb, tipping her head up so their lips hovered over one another’s, and she couldn’t look away when she said, “Because when we make the bond, we speak—it sings. And we’ll hear it forever, too.”

“You didn’t speak that night. You spoke in the stables.”

“I—”

“You did what you did, and then you tried to break it, too.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. The trail it left behind glistened until it stopped at his thumb. He wiped that drop across her warm skin, never once letting her go or breaking their stare.

“Would you do it again?” he found himself asking.

He hadn’t intended to.

“Would it mean saving you?”

Eryx let out a slow, steady stream of air that ached in his chest and rattled on the way out. “Wasn’t that the only reason you did it?”

“Then you have your answer, Eryx. I am who I am, and I cannot change.”

“I hunted you. I only wanted to kill you.”

The smallest of smiles painted her red lips. “But will you? Can you?”

It both infuriated him that she dared to ask that at all and flared his lust into a roaring fire that she seemed to enjoy challenging him. Absolutely nothing was going to quell the rage that lifted hot in his gut or satisfy the ache in his dick that was now so hard it strained against his trousers.

How did she do that?

Enrage him and turn him on all at once?

How?

Eryx’s hand jumped from her jaw to her throat. He squeezed hard enough to draw her right up to her toes, a wicked smile curving her lips at the same time. There was a glint in her eye—a taunting gleam that said you won’t, and he loved and hated that she was unafraid of him like this.

It only infuriated him more and made him hotter.

Damn her. He still tightened his hand on her throat. Willed everything she said to be a fucking lie—tales of crazy people with magic blood that lived in the seas. Hogwash. Bullshit. He wanted it to be nonsense, demanded his hand cut off her air more than he already had and squeeze her neck until the bones popped.

But he just kept staring at her.

She stared back.

He just … couldn’t do it.

As though Arelle could read the thoughts in his mind and feel the desperation in his shaking hand at her throat, she said simply, “I know.”

And since he couldn’t bring himself to kill her like he wanted, Eryx went with his only other option in his current situation. If he couldn’t sedate his need for violence, then he might as well sate the urge to fuck this woman until he felt like he could no longer breathe.

Why waste the entire night, after all?

Arelle didn’t seem at all shocked when Eryx kissed her. She was ready for it—all too willing to part those full lips of hers to give him a taste of what he craved. It took him all but a few long paces before he had her backside hitting the edge of the long table in the center of the room. In a blink, never once breaking the war of their kiss, he had her lifted to the table while she yanked the yards of silk that made up the skirt of her dress up around her waist.

Eryx drew in a hard breath when she widened her thighs, and he finally pulled away from her mouth just long enough to glance down. “Nothing under there again—you know, I think when I do find you’ve put undergarments on, I might cut them right the fuck off. You’ve made it too easy like this.”

“I think you like it.”

“Yes, I think I do, too.”

Her high, already-breathless laughter answered him back before she leaned forward and bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. The tangy sweetness that burst across his tongue when he bled, and she sucked his lip into her mouth, had him slamming her down to the table. His hands went between her thighs to spread her wider before his fingers found her soft heat. With nothing more than twisting strokes of three fingers inside her cunt, he had her whining against the table while he pinned her wrists high above her head.