Ruins of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #3) - Amelia Hutchins Page 0,126

kissing you, is she kissing him? Or is it just us kissing, and they sense it happening? I’m not saying it right because you fluster me.”

Knox smiled roguishly, noting that I was fumbling with my words, knowing exactly what he did to me. “They feel us, but they’re not with us. They feel a watered-down version of what we’re doing. Like when she took control because you were in heat, deciding you could withstand the pain. What could you feel of me when I was with her?” he asked, swimming us toward a bench created from fire and ice quartz, sending prisms of rainbows dancing over our bodies.

“I felt you were stretching me, but it was muted. I felt frustrated because Ember wouldn’t make you move faster, and I couldn’t control my body when she had control. I was a passenger in the backseat, watching everything. I could understand what was happening, but it felt more like an erotic dream. Then I woke up stuck to you like my body was a lock, and you were the key, and we fit together perfectly. I didn’t know how to release you, though, which admittedly was awkward and the most embarrassing thing in my entire life.”

“And do you know why Ember did that?” Knox settled me on his lap, leaning back to regard me through hooded eyes.

“Because she said you would end up dead if we didn’t protect you. Basically, Ember thinks you’re too stupid to live. She wanted to keep you safe by clamping down around you.”

Knox laughed, and his eyes sparkled with amusement, watching me until he realized I was serious. “She’s very young,” he grumbled. “My creature thinks you’re gorgeous and wants to pin you down and mark you everywhere so that the world knows you’re ours.”

“Mine wants to eat you most of the time. Pretty much right after we’ve fucked you, she’s considering which herbs to feed you to enrich your flavor,” I muttered, dropping my head to his shoulder before he jerked away from me, forcing my head to lift.

He studied my face, exhaling when he realized I hadn’t intended to take a bite out of him. I tried to move away from him at the twinge of unease his denial created within Ember and me. Knox wouldn’t allow me to mark him, but he intended to mark me. It was one-sided, and it bothered us. His hands tightened on my hips, preventing me from escaping his touch.

“This is where we speak our true feelings about the nuptials we are taking tomorrow,” he swallowed, noting that my eyes narrowed while studying him.

“I don’t think that is wise,” I swallowed past the lump forming in my throat.

Ember’s irritation at him flinching and recoiling from us slithered through me, making my emotions run high. Knox studied me, observing the way I had pulled back from him. I learned that half my mood swings were from Ember, and I felt them with her. I felt the overwhelming lust; it was both of ours mixed into one heap of confusion and longing we hadn’t learned to control yet. Knox was right. We were young, but we weren’t stupid.

“Marrying you won’t be a hardship for me, Aria. You’re brilliant, strategic, and absolutely beautiful. You’re a fire that burns without a match. You still look at the world with the eyes of innocence I once had. You make being around you easy, even when you’re mad. You forgive easily for things you shouldn’t, and things that you realize have nothing to do with you and everything to do with my turbulent past. You understand my flaws and the shattered pieces of what remains of me, and you haven’t tried to change them. You would try to glue me back together if you thought you could. You need to know that isn’t something that will ever happen. You can’t put something that broken back together.”

“No, but you can rebuild it, Knox. You’re still alive and breathing. Grief changes people. While it changes you irrevocably, it doesn’t get to rule or decide who you become. You’re not your grief. You’re a very virile male who has needs and desires. You fight for wrongs wrought to those who didn’t deserve them. You’re the type of man I’d go to war for, but you are the war that I wage. I have to fight to remind myself who you are when you kiss me. I struggle to remember why I’m opposing you and that you will be