From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,202

intense, pulsing ache between my legs twisted my insides. Hips shifting, I pressed my thighs together, but that didn’t help. The pressure only made it worse. “Hawke?”

“Poppy, for the love of the gods.”

Heart thrumming, I opened my eyes, and I’d been right. His gaze was fixed on me—on my other hand, the one that had a mind of its own and was slipping down my stomach.

“Kiss me?”

Taut lines formed around his mouth. “You don’t want that.”

“I do.” My fingers reached my waist, where the breeches gaped. “I need it.”

“You only think that right now.” His face cleared, and there was no mistaking the way his features had sharpened. “It’s the blood.”

“I don’t care.” The tips of my fingers brushed the bare skin below my navel. “Touch me? Please?”

Hawke made a low sound in the back of his throat. “You think you hate me now? If I do what you’re asking, you’ll want to murder me.” He paused, and his lips curved upward. “Well, you’ll want to murder me more than you already do. You don’t have control of yourself right now.”

What he was saying made sense, but it also didn’t. “No.”

“No?” His brows lifted, but he didn’t look away from my hand.

“I don’t hate you,” I told him, and there was a pained twist of the heart that told me that was the truth. I should be upset by that.

He made that sound again, and when his hand closed over my wrist, I almost wept with joy. He was going to touch me.

Except he did nothing more than hold my hand in place.

“Hawke?”

“I plotted to take you from everything you knew, and I did, but that is nowhere near the worst of my crimes. I’ve killed people, Poppy. There is so much blood on my hands that they will never be clean. I will overthrow the Queen who cared for you, and many more will die in the process. I am not a good man.” He swallowed hard. “But I am trying to be right now.”

A nervous flutter filled my stomach. His words…they should infuriate me, but I…I wanted him, and thinking was…well, it was all I ever did. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

“I don’t want you to be good.” Without even realizing it, I had lifted my other hand, fisting the front of his shirt. “I want you.”

Hawke shook his head, but when I tugged on the hand he held, he bent over me. My grip on his shirt tightened when he stopped with his mouth mere inches from mine. “In a few minutes, when this storm passes, you’ll return to loathing my very existence, and for good reason. You’re going to hate that you begged me to kiss you, to do more. But even without my blood in you, I know you’ve never stopped wanting me. But when I’m deep inside you again, and I will be, you won’t be able to blame the influence of blood or anything else.”

I stared at him, some of the fog of lust lifting from my mind as he lifted my hand and brought it to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to the center of my palm, surprising me. It was such a…tender act, one I imagined lovers did all the time.

I pulled on my hand, and he let go. I placed it against my chest. The tingling was fading from my skin, but the ache of unspent desire was still there. Not nearly as all-consuming as minutes before, but the part of me that felt like it was starting to wake up knew he spoke the truth. What I felt for him had nothing to do with the blood.

What I felt was…it was messy and raw. I hated him, and…I didn’t. I cared for him, as idiotic as that was. And I wanted him—his kiss, his touch. But I also wanted to hurt him.

We weren’t lovers.

We were enemies, and we could never be anything else. I was surrounded by people who hated me.

“I never should’ve left,” he said. “I should’ve known something like this could happen, but I underestimated their desire for vengeance.”

“They…they wanted me dead,” I said.

“They will pay for what they did.”

I shifted, feeling less…floaty and more solid. I moved my arm along my leg, still surprised that there was no pain. “What will you do? Kill them?”

“I will,” he said, and my eyes widened. “And I will kill anyone who thinks to follow their path.”

I stared at him, not doubting that he meant what he