His eyes flashed completely white. He enunciated, “Like hell.”
Her stomach roiled. She had known this was going to be hard. It was so much harder than she imagined. “He has to be.” She had to stop for air because he hadn’t moved an inch but his tremendous body clenched into a weapon and his Power turned violent and heavy, a pressing weight in the storeroom. He looked murderous. “He’s got to be Powerful and have influence—”
He moved faster than thought. He picked her up, whirled and slammed her back against the wall. She froze in shock. He shouted at her, “Like hell!”
She hit him. She couldn’t help herself. She punched him in the chest. “And he’s got to want the throne but not be able to get it by himself—”
Fury rampaged over his face. He sounded like a mortally wounded animal as he roared at her. “Nobody else can have you because you’re mine!”
Dignity, sophistication, civility, they were meaningless strings of syllables in this place of raw emotion. She shouted back, “I can’t be yours, and somebody’s got to hang around so they can keep me alive!”
“Shut the hell up,” he said, his voice savage. His features had reformed. He was a monstrous, merciless freak of nature, and she wanted him so badly she thought it would tear her to pieces from the inside.
She kept hitting him, the wild blows falling blind. “Will you get out of here, you son of a bitch? Go back to your life!”
She slapped him. She did everything she could think of to cause offense and drive him away. He took everything she dished out without a single flinch. He shook her once, a short, controlled snap of the wrist that rattled her torso, and he jerked her to him, his white eyes scorching. Then the monster’s mouth slammed down over hers, and he devoured her, heart and soul.
She couldn’t give either one of them to him fast enough. He dug into her mouth, his teeth and tongue hard, punishing. She clawed at his shirt as she kissed him back. She couldn’t get him close enough, couldn’t get the kiss deep enough.
Then he sank one fist into the hair at the back of her head. He forced her to look up at him. “Now you listen to me,” he growled. “It’s my turn to talk. I will not leave you. If Dragos or anybody else has a problem with it, they can take it up with me.”
“The Dark Fae will never accept you,” she said between her teeth.
“I don’t give a shit about what the Dark Fae accept or don’t accept,” he snapped. “There’s only one person and one thing that could make me leave, and that’s you. Look me in the eye, faerie. Tell me you don’t want me, and you better make me believe it.”
Tears welled up and spilled out the corners of her eyes. They streaked down her cheeks to soak into her hair. She looked devastated. She worked to form the words, her mouth trembling. Someone else might have taken pity on her, but he wasn’t a creature that knew much about pity. He knew a hell of a lot about fighting, though, and survival. He was fighting for the both of them now, if she only knew it.
She whispered, “I d-don’t want you.”
“What a bad liar you are,” the monster whispered back to her. “I can smell how much you want me. I felt your wetness and all I want to do is lick it up. Your desire is coated all over my fingers. It’s got me so hard I can barely stand up straight. You’re a twist in my gut I can’t unknot. I look for you when you’re not with me. After you sent me away all I could think about was how much time I should give you before I came back to you. I counted it by hours, by minutes.”
She stared at him, pinned and transfixed by his white eyes and the reformed structure of his face. “That’s just sex.”
“Is it?” He showed her his teeth. “How bad did you miss me when you thought I went back to New York?”
“N-not bad.” When she had found out he had left the hotel, she had curled up on her bed, unable to move.
“You said you missed me so much. How much is so much?”
“Not much.”
He cocked his head. There was something almost plaintive about his ferocity now, a puzzlement that sliced at her. “Why are you still lying?” he asked. “Why can’t you admit the truth to me? Is it such a horrible thing, to want me? Do you wish you didn’t? Is that why you’re trying so hard to drive me away?”
He was a lord of war. He instinctively knew more about assault tactics than she ever would. He had to know how he dug away at the foundation of her walls. It was a two-pronged attack, as he came at her from the outside but also from within, for she was her own worst enemy. She crumbled and sobbed, “I want you so much it’s making me crazy.”
“Then take me,” he said. His grip in her hair loosened. He knelt in front of her, shocking her anew, and wrapped his arms around her waist as he laid his head against her breast. “Because nothing else matters.”
She cradled his head and bowed over him, wiping her damp cheeks with one hand. “We’re so different from each other.”