Page 115 of Sunsplitter

Antal paced the room—like a panther, scouring for the best place to strike. They’d bickered before, sparring matches fought with barbs and tongues.

They’d never fought like this.

“You keep pushing me away,” Fi said. “The Twilit Plane, your family, the other daeyari. This entire piece of your life, and you don’t want me to have any part in it!”

“I left that life behind a century ago.”

“And you’ve been miserable because of it! You told me you miss spending time with other daeyari.”

“Not if it means putting you in danger—”

“You think I enjoy watching you drag yourself around like a wet cat?” She grabbed his cheeks, heedless of his warning growl. “Correct. I do. WhenI’mcausing it. And when I can cup your silly face afterward and tell you that you’re a good, kind-hearted carnivore and it will all be ok. That amusement doesn’t extend to cutting out your entire species.”

Standing this close, Fi couldn’t avoid breathing him in. Couldn’t ignore the hum of energy beneath his skin. Couldn’t stop her thighs pressing together when his eyes dropped back to her mouth. Wretched beast.

She kissed him again.

Her fingers sank into his hair. She dragged her front against his, just to feel him fighting back, to feel the eager grind of his cock against her. She struck him with her lips. She speared him with her tongue, delving hungry into the ridges of his fangs.

Antal’s tongue sank into her mouth, rough and unyielding.The growl rumbling his chest was one she recognized. Not just anger.Want.

Here they went again, grasping at frayed edges.

They stumbled down the hall, too tangled to walk straight. Fi hissed as a wall scraped her shoulder. Antal groaned as she gripped him between the legs, pressing her palm down every hard inch of his cock, trapped within the stiff fabric. He dragged teeth down her neck, and it took everything not to shout him into oblivion. Not to scrape her throat raw with the plea of his name.

The bedroom was their next arena. Antal snared an arm around her waist. His knee breached the gap between her thighs. Fi shuddered at the offensive.

“You aren’t prepared to fight an aedari,” he hissed against her mouth, the scant space between feuding kisses and shallowing breaths.

“Then tell me what I need to know!” She fought back with fingers carving his chest. “Tell me how to fight an aedari.” Her teeth scraped his lip. “Tell me, so I can fightwith you.”

She rocked against his thigh, a bloom of dizzying heat between her legs. Antal made a low, ravenous sound.

“You could have died today,” he rasped.

“But I didn’t.”

Fi cried out as fingers tightened in her hair. He tipped her head back, forcing her to meet molten crimson eyes.

“And how could I know that?” he said. “When you were gone? When I smelled your blood in the dirt?”

The strike made Fi stumble. That crack in his voice. That bone-chilling haunt in his eyes. When he kissed her, his mouth pressed so bruisingly desperate, because he’d believed it.

He’d believed she might be dead.

Fi had seen Antal lunge for Avroz. She’d heard vengeance inhis shout. She never wanted to cause him that pain, to pick at old wounds he claimed were healed. But…

“Why was I alone with Avroz?” she said against his jaw. “Becauseyouleft me behind.”

Antal shoved her onto the bed.

When he fell upon her, Fi clawed at his chest. She struck beneath his shirt, nails outlining every muscle, reminding him how fierce she could be. Not just any human.Hishuman. She’d earned that place a hundred times over.

Cunning fingers plied open her silviamesh bodysuit. He flayed the armor off her, exposing her chest, laying bare the curves of her breasts, splitting her open down to her naval. All soft mortal flesh, exposed to claws. She shuddered with each brush of knuckles.

Fi grabbed the collar of his fancy-ass daeyari shirt so hard, seams snapped beneath her fingers. The rip of iridescent fabric exposed his chest, lithe muscle and skin like granite, heaving with each furious breath. Every part of him, made to break creatures like her.

“You told me you wanted me at your side,” Fi said. “When you asked me to come back with you to Thomaskweld. You told me you didn’t see me as any less.”