The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (online e book reading txt) 📗

“Why—” The word cut off as he gave a small growl that had her body coming fully online, only with awareness rather than fear, blood rushing to fill her veins with a fizzing sort of heat. What a sound…

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snapped.

Before she could answer, he moved on top of her, faster than a lightning strike. He had her by the wrists, pinning her with his weight, mouth hovering over hers.

In the semidark, the flames in his eyes ignited, silver-tipped black, casting a strangely gray sort of light over them. Frozen above her, Samael seemed to drink her in, gaze moving to her lips, then down farther to her breasts, which pressed against him with each sharp intake of breath. That gaze feathered over her like a physical caress, skating across her skin, pressing, lingering…

“Why would I kill my king?” he demanded in a voice full of fire and smoky need. “Maybe I want to press my luck and see if the fates might have finally been kind and granted me a mate. A phoenix, no less.”

A metaphorical devil—the ghosts of Skylars past, perhaps—prompted Meira to a bravery that usually escaped her, an act of sheer stupidity. “Why don’t you try to claim me?”

Samael stopped breathing above her, and time hung trapped in the stars outside her window for a heartbeat. “Dammit, Meira.”

In an instant, emotions reached for her, wrapped around her—anger and passion all mixed up and confusing. And compelling.

He lowered his head, and, with a burst of anticipation, she waited, breathless, for his kiss. Everything she’d imagined when she hadn’t been able to stop herself, his lips demanding and hot and perfect as he plundered her own. Curiosity gave way to temporary insanity as her body took over from her mind. Meira was a jumble of impressions—heat infusing her skin, blood pulsing through her body, and intensity, heady and strong. The hard demand of his lips and yet how soft they were against hers, the flavor of him, subtle and dark against her tongue, and how with each press, each sweep of his mouth against hers, she craved…more.

“Ambrosia,” he pulled back to whisper against her lips. “You taste like ambrosia.”

Then he was kissing her again, laying claim to everything she was with the mere touch of his lips—frantic, desperate, and demanding. Emotions, vivid and unrecognizable, rose up inside her—from her, from him—and Meira whimpered with the force of them.

At the sound, Samael jerked back to gaze down at her, harsh breathing mingling with her own.

They stared at each other in the light cast by the fire consuming his eyes and that coming from the fireplace. Then he flung himself off her to drop beside her on the bed. Once more, his anger and desire pelted her, except now a small, stupid part of her wanted it.

“See? I could have claimed you if I wanted, and you wouldn’t have stopped me,” he pointed out in that low growl of a voice, his dragon so near to the surface she expected Samael to shimmer with the transition any second.

A small part of her flinched inside. Was that how he saw her? Someone who didn’t fight back? Who just endured whatever hardships life hurled at her and waited to be rescued?

That image stuck inside her, like a rock in her shoe. She didn’t like it.

“Or died in my fire,” Meira pointed out, stung by his words, his sudden rejection that left her colder than the stone gargoyles outside.

Samael shut his eyes, hiding the flames still dancing there and casting them both into more shadow. “One more dark mark against you as far as my clan is concerned.”

Meira reached for her power, needing to shut down her emotions this time. Not his, because he’d already walled them back up. Cold. Remote.

Vincent chose that moment to leap in through her window, his hooves clacking on the stone flooring. With a happy sound, he jumped up between her and Samael and lay down, like a puppy. Gargoyles spent the long, cold nights in their stone form on the parapets of the castle, and Vincent preferred sleeping somewhere warmer. No doubt he’d missed her the last few months.

“Are you kidding me?” Samael muttered, only to get a cold nose in the armpit for the effort.

Meira, meanwhile, absently patted the goat’s long, wiry fur. She had no idea what had just happened before Vincent showed up, but she did know Samael did nothing without a reason. “Why are you trying to scare me?”

He eyed her over the goat’s head. “Because your trust is too easily given. You aren’t scared enough.”

Another laugh punched from her, this one, though, edged in disbelief.

Despite a kiss that had reached into her soul and touched the essence of who she was, this man didn’t know her at all.

She rolled away from him, her back up against Vincent’s warm, fuzzy body, and closed her eyes. “You’re wrong,” she said quietly. “I’m always afraid.”

Chapter Seven

Samael stood before the massive, gilded mirror, currently reflecting his and Meira’s forms in her bedroom in the gargoyle castle. “Are you certain of this?”

In the reflection, he slid his gaze to the woman standing beside him. The woman who had snored softly in his bed all night. Technically her bed. The woman whose scents of smoke and jasmine lingered on his skin still, leaving him aching and empty.

He’d woken to find her using his chest as a pillow, her bright curls spread across him in soft waves. He couldn’t let himself think about the sweet blush that had stained her cheeks when he’d shifted positions and woken her. Or the way the innocent trust in her eyes darkened to embarrassment, not the wariness he’d expected, as she’d backed away. The ache would only get worse and his dragon louder.

Seven hells, that conversation last night. That kiss. The unexpectedness of it all. Of the way he’d opened up, even a little. But so had she. Of comfort given and