Page 70 of City of Snakes
Then my hand rose against my will, and I slapped myself across the face. Hard.
The fuck?
I hadn’t felt a caress against my mind. I’d felt nothing. She’d gotten past my mental blockades.
She gasped as my mouth hung open in surprise.
“Oh, fuck! Krait, I’m so sorry—that was meant to be amuch, muchlighter tap! I swear it.”
Sybilla crawled around the table and leaned over me. Cupping my cheek in her palm, she knitted her brows together and her lips slightly parted. Her gentle touch against the stubble of my cheek smoothed away the sting.
A laugh rumbled in my chest.
“You sadistic prick. Why are youlaughing? I could have snapped your neck!” she exclaimed.
Dramatic.
Her shoulders collapsed forward, her head almost knocking into my chest.
“You made me slap myself,” I said. My cheeks hurt from the stretch of a smile that was wider than I’d worn in a long while. “I asked you to make me do something, andthat’swhat you chose?”
The rise and fall of her shoulders indicated she was fighting laughter, too. “I did,” she choked out through a laugh. “I’d do it again too.” When she lifted her head, our eyes met.
“Do you even understand how much my friends would pay to have been able to do that?”
Something shifted in her expression—softened. Her hand still caressed my cheek, which no longer held any sting, and her touch was intoxicating in a sobering way.
The humor of the moment faded as she held my gaze with a need that I tried my hardest not to match. Our noses were so close, and her hand dropped from my cheek to my chest.
She shifted and crawled over me. I fought a groan as she lowered onto my lap. Though the air had been light with humor moments before, it now felt heavy, with no reprieve from my lust.
I should have pushed her away.
Every instinct screamed at me to stop her. She didn’t have all of the pieces of the prophecy—to let her act was to take advantage of her.
I thought myself better than that.
Until her hand trailed up my chest to my neck and her gaze followed, seeming fascinated. As her fingers traveled over my pulse point, a shiver ran down my spine.
This was a good thing, wasn’t it? Let her desire me. Let her want more.
She leaned forward and replaced her fingers with her lips. Her mouth grazed my throat, traveling up to the sensitive spot just below my earlobe. Every fiber of my control begged to be snapped. “Fuck...” I whispered as my head fell to one side.
My hands stayed planted on the ground beside her knees, but my Shadows weren’t behaving. She sucked in a breath as they snaked around her waist and teased the skin on her lower back, climbing beneath her tunic.
My hips gained a mind of their own and ground upward to meet her warm, welcoming core. The sound of her gasping into my ear nearly undid me.
She moved, and her lips brushed against mine, open, alluring. I longed to taste them more, longed for a kiss less sweet and more exploratory.
“Enough,” I ground out between our breaths.
I could not let her carry on without knowing the full weight of Isolde’s prophecies.
At once, she seemed to surface from her desire, sliding down my knees. It might have once brought me some pride to have a woman this worked up without even having to take her clothes off—without even really kissing her. Now, it just made the empty feeling inside me grow.
“Shit,” she muttered before lifting herself up in one swift motion. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Charming,” I groaned as I adjusted myself in my breeches.
