His bed was massive as well, soft as eiderdown and deliciously comfortable. She felt warm and sated and utterly relaxed, like a ragdoll with loosened joints. She looked at
Leander, solid and substantial and still asleep by her side, and a scotch-warm flush spread through her stomach.
He was beautiful as no other man she had ever known, burnished skin and sculpted muscle and potent masculinity laid over with elegant manners, perfectly at ease in his own body. Confident. Even in sleep he looked confident; a little, pleased smile curved one corner of his mouth.
The diffused morning light flattered him, though he didn’t need flattering, he was too perfect as it was. She lifted a finger and traced the outline of his dark eyebrow. The pad of her fingertip hovered just above the winged curve, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin.
Beneath her finger, she felt the echo of his dreams.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on his heartbeat instead.
In the four days she and Morgan had spent together in her rooms—
locked
into her rooms, she sourly reminded herself—Morgan had shown her how to drown out anything she didn’t want to see or feel, to manage the glut of sensation that came flooding through her with the touch of flesh upon flesh.
Thank God she had. If not, last night—with Leander’s hands and mouth and body over hers, inside hers—would have been something very different altogether.
Her gaze dropped to his lips. Her finger moved from his brow to linger over the dented curve above his top lip, a cupid’s bow of perfect proportion.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to touch his body again, to spend long hours discovering it. She wanted to tell him all her secrets and fears and feel the hard length of him filling her, stretching and inflaming her until she lost herself to him, to the magic they made together.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about this—whatever
this
was. She thought, frowning, she might happily forego any further thought on the subject for as long as possible.
Forever, preferably.
Last night changes nothing
, she told herself firmly, dropping her hand from its ghosted exploration of his face.
Nothing at all.
The lonely cry of a hawk gliding through the bleached sky drew her attention back to the windows.
A curious surge of desire pinged inside her stomach as she looked at the forest. It was deep and primal, like a bass note plucked once on a guitar string. But the note didn’t fade; it held and grew and vibrated in her stomach as she stared at the line of trees rolling off into the distance over low hills. The sudden urge to feel the loamy forest floor underfoot was an itch, an almost irresistible compulsion.
“It calls to you,” Leander murmured. He shifted his weight on the mattress, sending a waft of scented, warm air to her nose, the delicious smell of his skin folded within it. The heat of his hand was heavy and real on her hip. “Doesn’t it?”
He opened his eyes and gazed at her with a look of hot, hungry knowing.
She blushed deeply, wishing she wouldn’t. The memory of the pleasure he gave her with his body, with his hands and lips and tongue, became a delicious sweetness in her mouth.
“The forest? Yes, I suppose it does. I felt...safe there. At home.”
“That’s because it
is
your home.” He stretched like a cat in the sunshine, drowsy and languid, yet capable of coming fully alert at any moment to devour a mouse.
Or her.
He settled back down against the mattress and slid his hand from her hip to trace a path up her spine, making small, stroking circles with his thumb. It sent currents of electricity coursing through her body.
“What do you mean?” she asked casually, trying to ignore the pulse of pleasure his hands gave her, even this—the barest stroke of his skin over hers. Here in the clarity of the morning sun, the memory of her wanton abandon from the night before seemed something very far away—and best forgotten.
He lifted up on one elbow to peer down at her with half-lidded eyes, a secret smile. Even partially hidden behind a fall of shining jet hair, his eyes gleamed like jewels refracting the light.
“You were born there.”
She sat up abruptly in bed. The white satin sheets slid down to her waist, her skin prickled as it met the cool air. She stared down at Leander with wide eyes.
“
What
?”
He dropped his gaze to her naked breasts then lifted his lashes to gaze at her once again. His smile deepened. He raised a hand to her cheek, watched its path as he moved it down her jaw, over her neck. One finger traced the delicate outline of her collarbone.
“What a lovely creature you are,” he murmured, bringing his finger down to skim languidly between the swell of her breasts. “Not yet five o’clock in the morning, and you’re already shouting at me.”
She pulled the pillow out from under his head and smacked him with it.
Leander fell back against the sheets with a muffled laugh. He reached out for her, found her waist, pulled her atop his body with the easy work of strong muscle. She scowled down at him as he pushed aside her hair and cradled her head with both hands. He gazed up at her face.
“Are you ever going to stop with the dramatic pronouncements?” she demanded.
Something in his face softened. He stroked a thumb under the fringe of her lower lashes then pulled her face to his, bringing their lips into delicious friction. She thought she might not be able to breathe with want, with the desire that rolled through her as she felt his warm body under hers, his lips against hers.
Then, as he stroked one hand down her back and traced a finger into the cleft between her bottom, she thought breathing might not even be necessary.
“I may have one or two more dramatic pronouncements up my sleeve yet,” he murmured. His gaze, pale green veiled with shadows, angled to hers. “Perhaps something involving a bent knee?”
It took her a moment of stupefied silence before she found her tongue and willed it to move.
“I’m not sure I can take any more of your surprises,” she said, unnerved. She lowered her head to his chest to avoid his gaze and listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat, trying to calm herself with the rise and fall of his smooth chest beneath her cheek.
“And besides,” she said, tart, before she could stop herself, “things involving men and bent knees usually involve questions, not pronouncements. And large baubles. Specifically diamonds.”
She swallowed, bit her lip, felt flame spread across her cheeks.
“All right then,” he said, amused and unrepentant. He smoothed his hands over her head, combed his finger through the thick cascade of hair spread over her back. “I’ll say something entirely neutral. Perhaps...good morning?”
Jenna breathed in and out through her nose, vexed and rattled, verging on hysterical. “You have exactly ten seconds before your head becomes separated from your body,” she said with exaggerated care, concentrating hard on the real and grounding sight of an elaborate dressing table across the room, an elegant piece of burled walnut topped with Caraca marble and a shield-shaped mirror. “I was
born
here?”
He pressed his lips to her hair and she felt the laughter shaking him. “Hostile
and
demanding. The perfect duo. How irresistible. You are most definitely my dream woman.”
She flung herself off him with a frustrated huff, but he caught her before she rose from the bed and pushed her back into the downy softness of the mattress. He threw one heavy leg over hers, caught her wrist, and pinned it to the pillow over her head.
“You are so endearingly literal,” he said softly. Light spilled through his inky hair to paint the angles of his face deepest chocolate, espresso, and gold. She relished the heat and weight of his leg over her body, the firm muscles of his thighs and stomach and arms, the tickle of his hair against her skin.
She looked into his emerald eyes, filled with warmth and a deep, mischievous tenderness, and felt the cold and impenetrable thing that had been lodged inside her chest since childhood dissolve, like a block of steel lowered into a smelter.
She blinked up at him, dazed by an uncomfortable new feeling, something she hadn’t felt in years, something that made her body feel so light it was as if she was filled with helium and was in danger of floating off the bed and drifting up toward the ceiling.
She had a terrible suspicion this uncomfortable new feeling might be happiness.
No,
she thought.
Oh, dear God, no.
“Literal?” she repeated weakly. Her pulse was a sudden, thundering roar in her ears.
You cannot fall in love with him. You
cannot
.
He drew his hand down her arm, stroking the skin of her wrist and the soft place inside her elbow, caressing her shoulder, then her neck. He brought his hand up to cup the side of her face and lowered his head. He brushed the tip of his nose against hers.
“The New Forest has succored the
Ikati
of Sommerley for almost twenty generations. It’s kept all our secrets, allowed us to flourish and live undiscovered through hundreds of years. It’s in our blood. It’s in
your
blood. Your body may not have been born there, but your soul was, your spirit was. It’s your home, Jenna,” he murmured. “You’re finally home.”
“Oh.” She laughed, a little too high and breathlessly, turning her face to avoid his eyes. “Is that what you meant?”
She’d never known exactly where she was born. It was just another of the many mysteries of her childhood, an unimportant fact lost in the shuffle of moving and hiding and pretending to be something she was not. “Somewhere near the water,” was her mother’s standard response, and whether she really didn’t remember or just didn’t want to say, Jenna never found out. And so it was tucked away with all the other questions that were never answered, frozen
into the bitter cold that solidified around her heart so long ago. It was the kind of cold that burned like fire.
That’s why you’re here, remember?
she reprimanded herself.
Answers. Nothing more.
Leander lowered his face to hers. She exhaled and he stole it back from her lips, mingling their breath together. He drew his mouth over hers with a lovely, silken brush of skin against skin that made her shiver.
“My beautiful girl,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth. He spread his fingers around the back of her neck, his fingers warm and strong in her hair, stroking, possessive. “My lover.” She felt the heat of his erection growing stiff and insistent against her hip. He bent his head and nipped the tender skin of her neck, pressed his lips gently where he had bruised the skin from the night before. “Say you’re mine. Tell me you’re mine.”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO!
She squirmed beneath him, trying to escape, but he only laughed low in his throat and pulled her even closer.
“So demure,” he teased in that pirate’s voice that made her weak all over. He slid his hand down to her chest and cupped the fullness of one breast in his palm. His voice dropped an octave. “You weren’t quite so demure last night.”
He pinched her nipple between his fingers and she fought back a gasp.
She leapt up from the bed and stood quivering and wide-eyed before him. “Show me!” she blurted out, desperate for any distraction that would restore her rapidly shrinking sense of control.
His eyes drank her in, her breasts and hips and thighs, all so softly rounded, all so lushly feminine.
“As you wish, dear lady,” he drawled. He pulled the covers away from his body in one long, slithering rustle of fabric, revealing his naked body, the flat, hard muscles of his abdomen, his unabashed, impossible-to-ignore erection.
She blanched and yanked the sheet away from the bed with a hard pull, then wrapped herself in it, leaving nothing visible of her body save one bare forearm and her forehead and eyes, which blinked at him, fast and startled like a baby bird’s.
“Not
that!
” came the squeak of her voice through the sheet.
He lay back against the mattress with his fingers laced behind his head, a wicked smile lazing across his handsome face. The morning light gleamed in molten streamers across his chest. He crossed his ankles and slanted her a look of mock distress. “It grieves me to hear you find the sight of my naked body so distasteful, love. I rather think I might cry.”
“I meant the
forest!
I meant how to Shift to a panther!”
His body drew down to complete stillness at this. His eyes grew flat and dark, the smile vanished from his face. He sat up, ramrod straight, planted his feet on the floor and gripped the edge of the mattress. His legs were spread wide open, his stiff member jutted up to push against the reticulated muscles of his belly.
She looked away. His lack of self-consciousness, the perfect ease in which he inhabited his skin, struck her as more viscerally appealing than anything else she had seen of him so far. He exuded heat and untamed power, he was lithe and beautiful and unfathomable, he was utterly enticing and charismatic without one ounce of effort.
Yet she knew in her heart, for all his beauty and refinement and the poetry of his words, there lived beneath a
primal creature, poised to pounce. A creature that had had a hand in her father’s death.
She could never allow herself to be drawn into his world, no matter how skillfully he spoke words like
my beautiful girl
and
home
and
tell me you’re mine.
It seemed a very long time before he spoke. The room was still and cool around them.
“What you said last night,” he began, his tone dark and controlled, “in front of the Assembly, about Shifting at ten years old.”
Her gaze was drawn back to the startling, feral beauty of his face. A crackle of electricity fluttered over her skin. “Yes?”
“That was the truth, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was,” she snapped, failing to keep the affront from her voice. The sheet slipped down to her neck. She clutched at it with stiff fingers, drew it back around her throat.