Page 113 of Sunsplitter

One shuddering breath.

Then she lunged.

With a snarl, Fionamara grabbed him by an antler, pulling their faces too close. She bared all her teeth.

“Fuckingtry it, daeyari!”

Antal went rigid. To touch a daeyari’s antlers in public was a heinous insult. The gesture was reserved for herding children. For lovers in the privacy of their beds. Not to say Antal disliked when Fionamara gripped his antlers in private, her brazenness stirring the hungriest pieces of him.

Two daeyari watched the confrontation in stunned silence. Ixli, eyes wide. Syvr, brow scandalously askew, as though they were enjoying this far too much. Fionamara had grabbed his antler earlier, when she hadn’t known better. She ought to know now.

“Fionamara,” Antal hissed, “we aren’t alone.”

“I don’t care. Listen to me.”

He growled and tried to twist free. Her grip held stubbornly firm.

“I’m human,” she spat. “Believe me, I’m viscerally aware. But I’m notanyhuman. I wouldn’t be here if I wasanyhuman.”

Antal retaliated, the claws he’d threatened to rend her with, lashed out to grab her silviamesh collar. A lethal warning. Any sane-minded mortal should have retreated at the terror of daeyari claws at their throat.

Thiswoman didn’t flinch. He’d bluffed too often. She pressed closer, until his claws dimpled flesh, his head tilted by her grip on his antler. The heat of her fury was unrelenting as flame, deep as spiced embers.

“I’ve stood upon the Twilit Plane,” she said.

Antal bared his fangs. She bared her blunt teeth back at him, useless for carving flesh. Still savage somehow. He stared too long at her mouth, bewildered by the feral curves. All her devastating ire.

He couldn’t risk staring at that insolent, distracting mouth when he was angry.

“I have two daeyari antlers on my mantle,” Fionamara continued.

Void take him. She was uncompromising. Overwhelming.

Antal tried to pull away again, but she grabbed both antlers, pulling him mercilessly close. A devastating brush of her hip against his. The caress speared through him, sending an entirely unhelpful stiffness through his cock.

Fuck. She was gorgeous when she snarled.

“There’s a reason you fell in love with me,” she said. “And it wasn’t because I wasanyhuman.”

Of course not. This human was stubborn, and ferocious, and ruinously stunning because of it. Antal clawed for focus. He was angry at her recklessness. He wasfuriousat her for not backing down.

But he couldn’t stop staring at that damn mouth, still full of teeth, still deliciously curled. Close enough, he could have kissed her.

Despite all her shouting, hewantedto kiss her, just to silence those insolent lips. To hold her down until they both shouted themselves raw.

Fionamara tracked his gaze. A flush reddened her cheeks.

She released him.

Even then, she didn’t retreat. It was Antal who had to stagger back, a growl in his chest, a hard andundignifiedneed confined by his pants. By Veshri’s high and sharpened antlers, it had been so long since he’d seen her with all her bristles out.

“So,” she demanded. “What’s it going to be, daeyari?”

Antal shouldn’t be breathing this hard. His claws shouldn’t be tightening. This human had the audacity to skirt death, to weave miracles into her flesh, then to yell at him for beingoverconcerned? He couldn’t decide if he wanted to rip her apart with words.

Or with his tongue.

In whichever case, this wasn’t the place to do it.