“Have you never heard of a warrior-scholar?”
He continued to watch her with those clear silver eyes that made her imagine she could see galaxies within. “You have spots on your face.”
“What? It must be dirt from when you took me down.”
Shifting her wrists to one strong hand, he touched the rough-skinned pad of a finger to her nose and her cheeks on either side. “Spots.”
She glared past the shiver that wanted to ripple through her. “Those are freckles!” A sprinkling of them across the bridge of her nose and on the tops of her cheeks that had only become more entrenched with time, until she’d given up all hope of ever pulling off cool elegance.
Ignoring her, the predator holding her captive began to count her “spots.”
“Naasir.”
He looked up, expression suddenly dead serious. “Cutting me after fooling me with your outside skin wasn’t nice. It wasn’t civilized.”
“I didn’t promise to be civilized,” she said, then wanted to clamp her mouth shut. She’d spent most of her immortal lifetime being civilized and well-behaved and not an addict of sensation driven by her base needs.
Naasir snapped his teeth at her.
When she jerked, he laughed and stretched out on top of her, one hand still gripping her wrists, and his warm, masculine scent in her every inhale. “Then I’m not going to be civilized either.”
It was odd. She’d only met him hours earlier, and yet his words made something in her unknot, untwist. As if she’d lost something but managed to win it back again. “I only asked you to behave for a minute,” she found herself saying when she should’ve been telling him to get off. “You were aggravating me.”
His fingers flexed on her wrists but he didn’t release her. “I wasn’t hurting you,” he said with a scowl.
“No,” she admitted, the words from the letter stark against the landscape of her mind. “I was angry about something else and I yelled at you. I’m sorry.”
Those astonishing eyes held hers again as he closed the distance between them. “I want to lick your skin.”
That skin prickling with something that was very much not fear, she tried to buck him off. Of course she failed. He was significantly heavier. “I can’t breathe.”
“You’re an immortal.”
“My wings are squashed.”
He raised himself off her. “Spread them out.”
She did, easing the strain, but when she tugged at her wrists, he held on tighter and brought his body right back down on top of hers. “Now your wings aren’t squashed anymore and we can talk.”
Given that she could feel his arousal, hard and thick against her abdomen, Andromeda didn’t think it was talking he had in mind. She had the idea that if she gave him a single ounce of encouragement, she’d be naked with him inside her in a matter of seconds. “No,” she whispered, and for the first time in her existence, she felt regret for the choice she’d made.
He tilted his head to the side. “No?”
“I’ve sworn a vow of celibacy. It wasn’t done on a whim, or without thought.” It had been a hundred years in the making. “The vow is part of my honor, part of what makes me Andromeda.” Not Charisemnon’s grandchild. Not Lailah’s daughter. Not just another jaded princess of the court. Andromeda. Scholar and warrior.
A low, rumbling sound in Naasir’s chest, silver eyes burning above her. “Rutting isn’t dishonorable.”
Her cheeks burned from within. “It is for a woman who has vowed not to indulge in it.”
He shifted to rub himself against the juncture of her thighs. Her breath caught, her inner muscles spasming on aching emptiness as the place between her thighs went damp. Nostrils flaring, Naasir leaned in close enough to nuzzle her throat. “You want me.” It was a satisfied purr of sound.
Her throat was so dry it took her several attempts to get the words out. “That doesn’t change my choice.”