I moved to leave the bed and set the vial down on the tray with the others, but before I could place any distance between us, his arm reached around and he caught my hand.
“Riley,” he said, his voice low as he pulled me in front of him. His gaze met mine, and my other hand forgot it was holding a vial. The sealed bottle dropped onto the mattress. My heart skipped a beat at the longing I saw in his eyes, etched across his lips.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “We haven’t talked about…”
My hand reached up, my finger pressing against his lips, and before I really knew what I was doing, I was placing his hands on my waist, coaxing him to pull me flush against his chest, while my mouth found his.
“Rask, Riley.” It was half moan, half whisper.
“Shh,” I said.
“You’re right,” he breathed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
His firm lips closed around mine, enveloping them and caressing them softly, slowly, as if he were relishing every second of their contact. I closed my eyes, pressing myself harder against him, even though I knew I probably shouldn’t with his wounds. His hands dropped to the small of my back, then made their way up along the curve of my waist until his thumbs settled just beneath the cup of my bra.
I kissed him harder, wanting to absorb his pain, drown it out, if only for a few minutes. I knew his embrace was overwhelming whatever pain I had been feeling, and I desperately wanted to do the same for him.
My drowning attempts seemed to be working—perhaps a little too well—because he fell back on the bed, withdrawing his wings and pulling me on top of him. I trailed a line of kisses from his forehead, down his nose, before meeting his lips again, while his hands were beginning to tug at my clothes and move places that felt dangerously close to setting me on fire.
“Navan,” I whispered, as I realized that my own hands had started moving toward his waistline.
He didn’t respond, just kept kissing me, until we both realized we were beginning to near a point of no return.
He groaned against my lips, before removing his hands from my pants’ waistband. My heart was still galloping in my chest, and my blood felt like it had been replaced with liquid heat, but I didn’t protest when he rolled me off of him and onto the mattress by his side.
This was moving too fast. As much as I was overjoyed to see him, too much had happened—and at the same time, not enough had happened. We’d only just shared our first kiss, and, here in this coldblood bunker… it seriously wasn’t the time.
Our heads rested against the pillow as we stared at each other. His lips were slightly swollen, his grayish cheeks flushed. I could only imagine how much I was blushing.
“You okay?” he said.
I nodded, still trying to catch my breath. Then a small smile crept onto my lips. “Who the hell is Rask?”
My smile spread to his lips, causing his beautiful eyes to sparkle with amusement. It felt like it had been an eternity since I’d seen Navan smile, and the sight made my heart expand, everything around me falling away.
“I’ll tell you another time,” he murmured through his grin, moving in to press another kiss to my lips.
“Huh? Why?”
Before he could respond, there was a sharp rap at the door. Our safe little bubble shattered, and Navan and I were so startled we almost bashed heads as we leapt out of bed.
My hands moved down my clothes, smoothing them out, while Navan tugged his shirt back on.
“Come in,” he growled, irritation lacing his baritone voice.
The door swung open. I was expecting it to be the female coldblood, but to my surprise, it was the male coldblood with hazel eyes and buzzcut hair that I’d met earlier. The one who’d been trying to convince me to talk before Navan got tortured.
What surprised me more was Navan’s reaction to the man. Hell, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
His jaw slackened, his mouth dropping open as he stared.
“U-Uncle?!”
Chapter Ten
“What?” I blurted, while Navan stalked closer to the man and grabbed him by the shoulders. He blinked several times, as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Lazar averted his gaze to the floor.
“Uncle Lazar. Wh-What are you doing here?” Navan gasped.
Lazar swallowed, then stepped around Navan and into the room to create a little more distance between them both. “Yes, Navan. It’s me.”
Navan shook his head, stupefied. “What? How?”
Lazar sighed. “I’m a rebel, nephew. Have been for a long time.”
Navan staggered backward. “You’ve been playing both sides? All this time? Why?”
Lazar shuffled his feet, still looking slightly uncomfortable. “Because I believe in the cause, Navan. I believe that our great nation was never meant to be severed in two, and I believe that we are long overdue for a rehaul of the system. I believe in the power of the people.”
Navan went silent. Then his hands balled into fists. His breathing became sharper, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “And you believe in… this?” He gestured a hand around the room. “You believe in capturing and imprisoning innocent people? Stealing and slaughtering humans?” His voice rose. “Letting your own family members be tortured?!”
His chest was shaking now, and I realized, just as had happened to me barely an hour ago, his shock was transforming to rage. I had seen how Navan acted under the influence of rage before… and it had not been pretty. I half expected him to fly at Lazar and rip his head off like he had done to Jethro, but he held himself in place, for the moment.
Lazar held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I don’t expect you to accept it’s a necessary evil, Navan, even though to me, it is. I don’t want to get into an argument with you. Really, I don’t. Neither did I want you here in the first place, for the record. But you ventured here of your own accord, and now, well… I’m not in charge. Orion is.”
“So I take it you haven’t come here to help us escape, then,” Navan scoffed, a part of him still appearing to be disbelieving.
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
The words sounded incredibly harsh coming from an uncle to his nephew, and yet, even as he spoke, his air of discomfort remained. It made me recall my earlier encounter with him, and I realized that perhaps his motives for getting me to talk were more virtuous than I’d initially thought. Maybe Lazar had been trying to prevent his nephew from getting hurt more.
But apparently his good intentions didn’t stretch much farther than that.
“Then why have you come here?” Navan spat.
“Orion feels he’s given you enough time to talk and wants to finalize the agreement. He… sent me to bring you to him.”
“Oh, excellent,” Navan said. “Thanks so much for that. Just what family is for.”
He turned his back on Lazar and faced me, his expression positively seething. It looked like it was taking all he had to keep himself in check, so much so that I felt compelled to say to his uncle, “Can you just wait outside for a minute?”
Lazar nodded, not meeting my eyes, and moved swiftly out of the room.
Coldbloods (Hotbloods #2)
Bella Forrest's books
- A Gate of Night (A Shade of Vampire #6)
- A Castle of Sand (A Shade of Vampire 3)
- A Shade of Blood (A Shade of Vampire 2)
- A Shade of Vampire (A Shade of Vampire 1)
- Beautiful Monster (Beautiful Monster #1)
- A Shade Of Vampire
- A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Novak
- A Clan of Novaks (A Shade of Vampire, #25)
- A World of New (A Shade of Vampire, #26)
- A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire, #21)
- The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)
- The Secret of Spellshadow Manor (Spellshadow Manor #1)