Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,87
unaware what that did to me, the flash of teeth a reminder that I longed to claim her with my own, to mark her up, to tear flesh with my fangs. I clenched my hands to fists, shoving those thoughts aside only for them to come back swinging, stronger than ever, when she tentatively touched my thigh. “Sometimes I feel like I’m taking advantage of your good nature… and your friendship with Elijah.”
“That’s ridiculous, Katja,” I said tightly, unable to tear my gaze away from her fingertips on my leg, her touch somehow both featherlight and bruising.
“Is it?”
The wobble of uncertainty had my head snapping up, and I found her studying me with such doubt, such disbelief, that it was like a stake to the fucking heart. “Maybe at first I-I volunteered because Elijah and you… He knew from the very beginning…” Fated mates. Why did the stars favor shifters? Why did they get soulmates while the rest of us were left to flounder about for eternity? “But now I…”
Now what?
What was I supposed to say?
Pour my heart out—not a chance in hell.
My body responded with a will of its own, ignoring my sluggish thoughts, my scattered mind, and reached out for her. I smoothed a few fallen bits of coppery-red back behind her ear, tending to the shorter layers that always refused to stay with the herd. Surprisingly soft, despite the frizzy ends. Her breath caught as my fingers slid down the curve of her mane, tracing it, then up the column of her neck, along her jaw. My thumb found her lower lip before I’d clued into its intention, plucking at it, tracing the fullness, the rosebud pucker. Victory sharpened in my chest when her lips parted for me, when the pink beneath my thumb trembled ever so slightly…
I reared back with a hiss like she had burned me—for she had. The lightest touch, torturously fleeting, and Katja Fox set me aflame.
And the fire reminded me that she belonged to another.
Their heat was meant for each other; my frost, my dead porcelain, had no role to play in this game.
I can’t.
“And now?” Katja whispered, hope twinkling in her sapphires, tenuous and paper-thin but there.
Christ. I stabbed my thumb into the would-be mattress beneath us, as if feeling the cot’s cruel springs would extinguish the fire. “What?”
“You said at first you—”
“Now we’re…” I swallowed hard again—only the knives were gone. My mouth watered for her as it never had before, and that should have been my cue to run. Take a walk around the cellblock. Pester Avery—something. “We’re friends.”
The witch brushed her lower lip with a frown. “Just friends?”
“What the fuck are you doing, Katja?” I demanded roughly. My growl had her cheeks igniting and my cock shooting to attention. Damn it. I covered the traitorous bastard as best I could while I shuffled away, seconds from bolting… or I’d pounce. “You belong to—”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she said fiercely, eyes glistening as she prowled after me. “I belong to me, and I decide my fate and my future and…”
We stilled at the end of the cot, me a breath away from toppling over and onto the floor, her on her knees—and her hands fisted in my jumpsuit, buttons straining under her grasp. The physical contact came so easily. After months of whispering through the wall, keeping our distance around the others, it felt so natural.
Felt like I never wanted her to stop touching me.
Vision slowly clouding over with a bloodlust haze, I snapped and slammed my mouth to hers in a brutal kiss that had her gasping. Before, Katja had been the aggressor, initiating every touch, every caress, stalking me across the cot, but in that moment, she tasted a true predator in all his violent glory. I kissed to claim, to conquer, hands in her hair and tongue between her lips. Her heart roared, her pulse a war drum pounding, pounding, pounding in my ears.
And then clarity struck.
My eyes shot open and I reared back, incensed at myself for indulging the beast within. For that was what this had been—just another weakness, another failing on my part.
On her knees, Katja sat trembling in my wake, her cheeks a brilliant rosy pink and her lips swollen…
Bleeding.
My fangs must have nicked that luscious lower lip at some point; a ruby dot plumed without the pressure holding it back, and Katja tentatively wiped it away, blinking down at her fingertip like she didn’t understand what had happened.