Page 51 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

She tasted like black cherry and bourbon and a sweetness that was hers alone. Her mouth was warm and demanding and she kissed the way she did everything—with full commitment and zero hesitation and a confidence that obliterated his remaining capacity for strategic thought. His hand slid from her waist to the small of her back and pulled her closer and she arched into him and her fingers climbed from his chest to his collar to his jaw to his hair⁠—

His lion roared.

Not audibly. Not yet. The internal detonation—the deep, resonant vibration that started in his chest and radiated outward—manifested as a low growl against her mouth that made her grip tighten in his hair. His strands rose under her fingers. The cape billowed in the wind behind him. The Brooklyn skyline blazed and the bass from the warehouse thumped four stories below and they were kissing on a rooftop in a villain cape and it was exactly as dramatic as his lion required and twice as dramatic as his dignity would have permitted if his dignity were still operational, which it was not, because her tongue slid against his and his brain went dark.

When they separated—an inch, two inches, her forehead against his chin because the height difference persisted even in heeled boots—they were both breathing hard. His hand was still on the small of her back. Her fingers were still tangled in his hair, which was standing in every direction and making no effort to correct itself.

She spoke first. “You kissed me in a villain cape.”

“I’m aware.”

“On a Brooklyn rooftop.”

“Yes.”

“You realize this is the plot of every comic you claim to be too sophisticated for.”

His forehead dropped against hers. Her hazel eyes were close enough to map—green around the iris, amber near the pupil, gold flecks that caught the bridge lights. His thumb traced a slow line against her lower back, over the silk of the camisole, and she shivered.

“I’m choosing not to engage with that observation.”

She laughed. Against his mouth. The vibration traveled through his lips and landed in a place it would never leave.

He kissed her again. Slower this time. Thorough. His other hand came up to cup the side of her face, his thumb at the hinge of her jaw, and she melted—the fierce, brilliant, unintimidated woman who’d called him Your Majesty on day one and never stopped, who’d put a candle in his office and music in his speakers and chaos in every ordered corner of his life—she melted against him and sighed into his mouth and his lion decided, with the absolute conviction of an apex predator who had finally stopped circling, that this was it. This was the one. Everything before was preliminary. Everything after started here.

The cape billowed.

The city burned below them.

His phone buzzed in his pocket: Dekel, or Aspen, or the entire Sterling Pride receiving his changed heartbeat through some frequency he’d never believed in before tonight. He ignored it.

“We should go back down,” Lark murmured against his collar. “Before someone sends a search party.”

“In a moment.”

“Rune.”

“One more moment.”

She pressed her face into his chest. His arms closed around her. The purple satin cape—ridiculous, theatrical, undignified—wrapped around them both in the wind, and he held her on a Brooklyn rooftop with Manhattan blazing across the water and the bass thumping below and his hair refusing to lie flat and his lion settled for the first time in his life.

His phone buzzed again. He pulled it out.

Dekel: Your heart rate spiked on the watch monitor. Either you’re fighting or you’ve finally kissed her.

Dekel: Based on the fact that I haven’t received an emergency alert, I’m going with option B.

Dekel: Congratulations. Your sister lands at JFK in six hours. You have that long to prepare a statement.

Rune turned off his phone.

Lark looked up. “Everything okay?”

“My sister is flying from Stockholm.”

“Because of the cape photo?”

“Because of the cape photo.”