her to speak. Our eyes connected and held. I was relieved when she didn’t twitch her gaze away.
Slowly, she pressed a hand to my bare chest. Right where my heart was thudding away.
“Use it,” I rasped. “So you know I speak the truth.”
Her eyelids fluttered in surprise, her lips turning down into a frown. I’d meant her power—whatever it was she was capable of doing, though I had a relatively good guess of what that was—and she knew it.
There was something else there. Fear. In the lightness of her eyes, there was the flickering of fear.
Because I knew her secret?
Then that flickering shifted. Her lips flattened. She seemed to decide something…and a moment later I felt what it was.
That buzzing sensation crawled up my skin and I forced myself to keep from shuddering. It felt like tendrils of energy caressing my flesh, sinking into it, into me.
It felt good and before I knew it, I felt my cock thickening with her invisible touch. Then those tingles came across my scalp and I closed my eyes, filling my lungs with a deep breath of air.
I heard her gasp, felt her dull little claws curl into the flesh of my chest. When I opened my eyes, I saw her own were half-lidded. She looked dazed—like she wasn’t entirely present. Like she was somewhere else entirely.
Because she’s in me, I realized.
That energy pulsed and thrummed until the tension filling the air between us became too thick. It felt like warm air before a storm, crackling with something. Awaiting something powerful and dangerous and awe-inspiring.
I growled, dipping my head, my hand delving into her hair when I couldn’t take it anymore. She met my roughened kiss with enthusiasm that surprised even me and I groaned as I stroked her tongue with mine. Her other hand gripped my arm, just above my Vorakkar cuffs, and her nails sank deep.
Pulling away with a hiss, I rasped, “Do you still ache?”
Her brow furrowed. “W-what?”
“Did I hurt you?” I trailed my hand down to her trews, brushing my thumb along the seam that ran between her legs. “Here?”
“Oh,” she breathed, biting her lip. She was blinking, trying to surface from the haze of lust and need that we’d somehow found ourselves wrapped in again. “I feel fine, but…”
She blinked again and I jerked, feeling her abruptly pull out of my mind. Her shaking fingers brushed across her right temple and she stepped back from me, her booted foot crunching over a fragment of a broken dish from the spilled tray.
My body was throbbing with want and need. Hers was too, I knew. That tantalizing flush had begun to crawl up the column of her throat and when she looked at me, she couldn’t conceal her interest.
But something had stopped her.
“Your…” she trailed off, trying to get back her breath, which I might’ve stolen from her. “Your pujerak told me that a thesper arrived for you from Dothik. He told me to tell you once you woke. It—it sounded important.”
I stiffened and the blurry haze of desire slowly began to fade. Thoughts of duty, of responsibility took its place.
Vok.
“When?”
“The first afternoon,” she replied.
I cursed. Why hadn’t Hedna woken me?
But I knew why. He knew I needed to sleep.
I was already heading towards the entrance, regret and frustration filling my chest. Before I left, however, I looked back at her, saw her standing, frozen, at the end of my bed.
“We have much to talk about, leikavi,” I rasped. “Tonight. When I return.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The horde king returned to the voliki in a blackened mood.
My breath hitched when his eyes immediately found me, sitting in the middle of the bed, cross-legged.
His mood blackened further when he saw the floor had been cleaned and cleared of the old food and broken dishes but he said nothing. Instead, he stripped off his trews and strode, naked, to the cool bathing tub and stepped inside.
I was only in a tunic, my legs and feet exposed. My pants were hanging near the fire, drying after I’d tried to wash them.
“You are not a slave here.”
His voice was soft but firm.
“I know,” I said, just as softly.
He closed his eyes briefly as I studied him. I didn’t know what had happened earlier, after I’d entered his mind at his command. It had been strange, consuming…and oddly intimate. Even during his apology, I’d sensed the truth in his words. I hadn’t needed to enter his mind to know how he felt about the events of three nights ago.