Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
My fingers curled around the edge of a shelf. “It was nothing.”
“That’s a lie, Princess.” His mouth was closer, just a breath from mine. “You did it even though you felt their fear and distrust. It was everything.”
I felt my lips part. “And that’s what you needed to tell me in the pantry?”
He shook his head, causing my breath to hitch when his lips glanced off the corner of mine. “I wasn’t done.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Please, continue.”
“Thank you for your permission,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “There are many times when I’m in utter awe of you.”
I stilled. Every part of me.
“I shouldn’t be surprised by what you’re capable of,” he went on. “What you’re willing to do. But I am. I’m always in awe of you.”
A tugging sensation in my chest stole a little of my breath. “Is that what you needed when you pulled me into the pantry?”
“I’m still not done, Princess.”
My pulse thrummed. “No?”
“No.” His forehead dropped to mine. “There is one more thing I need. Something that I’ve needed for days. Weeks. Months. Maybe forever.” The bridge of his nose brushed mine. “But I know you won’t allow it. Not like this.”
The pounding in my chest moved lower. “What…what have you needed for so long?”
“You.”
I shuddered.
“So, maybe, just for a few minutes, when no one is looking—when there’s no one but us—we can pretend.”
Leaning into the cupboard, I felt dizzy, as if I weren’t getting enough air into my lungs. “Pretend?”
“We pretend that there’s no yesterday. No tomorrow. It’s just us, right now, and I can be Hawke,” he said in the heated space between us. I shook once more. He touched my cheek, sending a bolt of awareness through me. His fingers drifted over my chin, my lower lip. “You can just be Poppy, and we can simply share a kiss.”
“A kiss?”
He nodded. “Just pretend.” His lips now a whisper against my cheek. “Just a kiss.”
I shouldn’t.
There had to be a hundred reasons why. It blurred the lines of who we were. I’d told him it would never happen again. He was using me. I was using him. Kissing wasn’t wise. Even with all that I didn’t know, I knew enough to realize that it never stopped with a touch of the lips, even when it did. There was always more. Wanting. Needing.
And I wasn’t sure how I even felt about him since my feelings toward him seemed to change every five minutes. But either way, I shouldn’t allow anything like this. If I did, everything would be harder, even more confusing than it already was. Tawny could perfectly sum up what it was now in two words: a mess.
But a woman was about to die.
Her mother said I was still Chosen.
A man in there didn’t want my touch.
Some in that room feared me.
Hated me.
I could still feel Lord Chaney’s teeth in my flesh even though there were no wounds.
I could still see the burning coal of his eyes, and feel how I was nothing more than an object to him. Food. Sustenance. A thing.
And I didn’t want to feel any of that.
I wanted to bask in Casteel’s awe of me, and maybe…maybe I already knew, deep down, how I truly felt about him.
“Just pretend?” I trembled as the tips of his fingers skated down the side of my throat, around to the nape of my neck.
“Pretend.” His lips hovered above mine once more, right there, teasing.
I closed my eyes, my voice barely more than a whisper. “Yes.”
Chapter 18
Like before, the night of the Rite, when we’d been under the willow tree in the gardens and I’d asked him to kiss me, he hadn’t wasted a moment.
Except he’d been Hawke then, and we hadn’t been pretending.
His lips brushed over mine, once and then twice, so incredibly soft and gentle that it threatened to unravel all pretenses. I shuddered and felt his lips curve against mine. I knew he grinned. I knew that if I opened my eyes, I’d seen that infuriatingly tempting dimple of his. The touch at the back of my neck and against my cheek, just below the scar, was featherlight as he seemed to map out the feel of my lips with his, slowly, leisurely reacquainting himself. Tiny shivers skittered through me.
But I wanted more. Already.
Impatience burned through me. Lifting my hands from the shelf, I gripped the front of his tunic and pulled him against me. “I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”
I shook my head. “That’s not what you can do.”
He chuckled against my lips. “You’re right. It’s not.”
Then he truly kissed me.
He claimed my lips as if he were staking a claim to my very soul. The possibility that he was already well on his way to doing so should’ve served as a dire warning, but I was far too immersed, far too gone at the feel of him, lost in how demanding his lips were. He tugged on my lower lip with his fangs, urging my lips to part. Gasping, I yielded to him. The kiss deepened, and his tongue slid over mine. I let out a little breathless moan against his hot mouth. The taste of him, his smell…all of him invaded me, scalding me.