Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,86
the fact that my linens now smelled like her. For Elijah’s sake, for hers—hell, maybe even for my own—I had battled my attraction to her for months. The last time the dragon shifter had brought it up, he seemed marginally accepting of my interest in her, but I couldn’t do that to him. Couldn’t… covet his fated mate.
Even if she was lovely—Aphrodite reincarnate.
Even if I was a sucker for good conversation, and every single night we had that in spades.
Now here she was, sullying all my hard work, my resistance to her lure, her unwitting siren song, by shuffling down the cot and closing in on me as Tully meandered off her lap and sat his asshole down on my pillow.
While I longed to gaze into her eyes, I focused on my hands instead, fidgeting with the red fabric stretched over my thighs. No. I staunchly refused to be in a fucking love triangle with my best friend and a witch. I couldn’t. I had to—
Her hand suddenly found mine, her flesh an inferno only surpassed by her mate, and before I could stop it, her fingers wove us together. Desire surged, cock swelling with interest again, and my mouth watered as a delicious image danced through my mind…
Of her—naked, sprawled over a luxurious bed so vastly different from the one we found ourselves on.
Her creamy soft skin, her eyes burning with starlight, her crooked finger beckoning me home.
And me, ravenous, a monster, sinking my fangs into her inner thigh.
Fuck. I tugged my hand away, my attempt to be gentle—kind, even—failing miserably.
“Katja, maybe you should…” Go. Get the fuck out of my cell while I still clung to the tenuous strands of self-control. Everyone always talked about how shifters fought the beast within, the man trying desperately to quell the animal snarling in his chest. But they never mentioned how we struggled, how vampires faced temptation each and every night. How we were bound by laws, punishable by stake or sunlight should we break them, that forced us to keep our basic instincts in check.
To swallow the bloodlust.
The lust in general.
“No, please just…” Katja fiddled with her nails, cheeks flushed again at my rejection. “I need to… I… Thank you, Rafe.” She shuffled about on the cot, one leg bent and tucked under her, the other dangling over the side as she faced me. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“Er, like I said…” I scratched at the back of my neck, falling back on all the fake nonchalant gestures I had studied and perfected over the centuries. Tully’s eyes locked on mine for a beat, his tail swishing back and forth, my pillow officially his, and I cleared my throat. “It’s really nothing. He’s a good cat—”
“I’m not just talking about Tully,” she insisted. “I haven’t had the chance to say it, and I should have sooner, but thank you for… talking to me that first night. And every night since then.”
Except the night she returned from the bakery reeking of sweat and sex, of Elijah and sweet briar rose petals and so much more that it suffocated me. The memory hung between us, as unacknowledged now as it had been back then. Loath as I was to admit it, I’d sulked that night. I’d let weakness win and pouted in my cell like a child.
All was right the following night, but weeks later, I despised myself for reacting that way—for punishing her when she wasn’t at fault. Neither was Elijah. And, frankly, neither was I. The storm brewing between we three, featuring a lightning bolt of Fintan every now and again, was nobody’s fault.
But my responses were mine, and I owned the guilt of ignoring her that night.
Jaw briefly clenched, I glanced her way, hating how lovely she looked in the darkness, how the light trickling in from the common area really highlighted her beauty. “Katja—”
“No, let me say this.” The witch rolled her shoulders back, as if steeling herself—bracing herself, preparing herself, and I feared where this might be headed. “I need to… I wouldn’t have made it a week without you being there at night. You’ve been so good to me, and I feel like I’ve been taking and taking—”
“We’re all just trying to survive in here,” I muttered, my one-shouldered shrug halfhearted. She tucked her loose red waves behind her ears with a sigh, her breath the pungent spearmint of the prison toothpaste.
“You make it a lot easier.” She paused, only to gnaw at her lip—wholly