His features tightened at her blatant incredulity.
“He did send Fallon to lure Styx away from his lair, no doubt knowing that I would follow.”
“Why would Cyn sneak around?” She shook her head. “If he wanted the imp dead, then he could have demanded that Styx hand over his prisoner. It’s not like Styx would have cared what happened to a fey who’d already betrayed him once.”
He waved aside her logic in his usual princely fashion. Jackass.
“Perhaps he feared the imp had information he didn’t want the King of Vampires to know.”
“Information?”
Magnus shrugged, his gaze scanning the dark countryside, almost as if he sensed some sort of approaching danger.
“He’s holding a Chatri princess in his lair,” he said, his tone absent. “We can’t truly know that he isn’t using her for his own nefarious purpose.”
A sharp, unexpected jealousy sliced through her heart.
It was . . . insane.
She was never jealous. She had no interest in holding on to a lover who’d turned his attention to another female. After all, there were plenty of males anxious to earn a place in her bed.
But there was no mistaking the ugly anger that was twisting her stomach at the mere mention of Fallon’s name.
“So you’re suddenly worried about your fiancée?” she ground out.
He sent her a wry smile. “Did you not want me to display more compassion?”
“Whatever,” she muttered, giving a toss of her head as she headed toward a narrow lane.
The voice of reason had told her not to come with Magnus on his search for the magic-user. It’d warned her that spending more time in this man’s company was a mistake.
One of these days she was going to listen to that voice.
“No.” Without warning Magnus was grabbing her arm, yanking her to an abrupt halt. “Wait.”
Tonya tugged her arm free. Magnus might be a horse’s patootie, but he’d never been a bully.
“What the hell?”
Magnus grimaced. “A trap.”
Cyn moaned as Fallon wrapped her legs around his waist, allowing him to sink deeper into her warm, welcoming body.
It didn’t matter that he’d spent the past six hours ravishing this female. He was fairly certain that he could spend the next century exploring her from the top of her silken hair to her tiny toes and still feel obsessed with the need to have her in his arms.
Lightly scraping his fangs down the length of her neck, he gripped her hips and plunged into her silken heat, a groan wrenched from his throat.
“Cyn,” Fallon breathed, her fingers tangled in his hair as she arched beneath him. “Please.”
He shuddered, the violent urge to sink his veins into her flesh an overwhelming need.
Bloody hell.
His every instinct was screaming to mark this woman, to complete the mating so she would be bound to him for all eternity.
Instead he buried his face in the champagne scent of her silken hair, increasing the tempo of his thrusts.
Until Fallon was willing to accept that they were destined to be together he wouldn’t force the issue.
She’d spent her entire life being bullied by the men who were supposed to respect her. She’d been told what she could and couldn’t do.
She had to come to him freely.
“Please what, princess?” he roughly demanded, trailing his lips down her collarbone. “What do you need?”
Her fingers tightened in his hair, her hips lifting off the mattress to meet him stroke for stroke.
“I need . . .” Her words broke off in a strangled groan as his lips found the tip of her breast. “You. Just you.”
He used his tongue to lash the sensitive nub, treasuring her soft moan.
He might not own her heart—at least not yet—but her exquisite body was his.
All his.
“You’ve got me,” he teased, sliding his hand between their bodies to find the precise spot of her pleasure. “And I’ve got you.”
“Yes.” She yanked his hair as she went rigid with pleasure beneath him, her inner muscles squeezing his cock as she came with a violent force. “Oh . . . yes.”
Cyn surged up to take her lips in a savage kiss, giving one last thrust as his orgasm slammed into him.
“And I’m not letting you go,” he murmured against her mouth, the words so soft he wasn’t sure she could even hear them.
With a last lingering kiss, he allowed his hands to run over her slender body. The need to maintain a physical connection with Fallon was an unbearable ache.
Until they mated . . .
No. With a last nuzzle against her throat, Cyn forced himself to untangle his body from Fallon’s lingering hold.
He couldn’t dwell on his primitive urges.
Not now.
Once the threat to the world was over and the good guys had succeeded, he intended to do a full-throttled, good old-fashioned courtship.
He would win her heart, and then he would earn her soul.
Climbing off the bed, he reached for the cell phone he’d left on the small table, not surprised to discover there was a message from Dante.