Page 130 of The Mercy of Dawn

Cyril stiffened.

That was…not what she was prepared for.

The answer to that was something she knew immediately, but she was not ready to put any of it into words. She was certain she liked Mikael. A lot. More than made sense to her for how little she knew about him.

But she didn’t think he’d want to fucking talk about it.

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

“You won’t hurt my feelings or scare me off either way.” Mikael gave her a smile she assumed was supposed to be reassuring. It was not. “I was going to ask you last night, but it seemed like a pretty shitty follow-up to the whole dead girlfriend thing.”

“I…I forgot we talked about that.”

Cyril wrapped her arms a bit more tightly around herself. She’d handed him something so fucking personal and hadn’t thought twice about the implication of it. He had the upper hand in everything now, but that didn’t scare her like it should.

“What if I said the answer was both? That I’m…interested, and that may have influenced my drunk and desperate behavior?”

Tension slipped from his shoulders.

“Well, Lady Cyril, if that were your answer, I would say—” Mikael extended his hand to her, and she took it, letting him guide her over. The unease in his eyes gave way to a sort of frosty intensity that made her want to kiss him again. Badly. “—that I am very relieved.”

A smile passed between them that Cyril wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to properly articulate the feeling of. Her body thrummed with this warm and foreign sort of happiness that she didn’t want to leave. Ever.

“What happened to Wrath Incarnate?” she breathed.

Mikael already had his fingers notched under her chin, his thumb grazing her lower lip. He lowered his mouth to hers, pausing when their noses brushed to murmur, “I’ll call you whatever you want, Cyril, as long as I get to kiss you again.”

That made two of them.

Cyril braced her hands on his hips, surging up on her toes, and didn’t hesitate to close that last breath of space between them. The rich, rumbling hum of appreciation that left Mikael sent any last rational thought of hers skittering and she nipped at his bottom lip.

The prince approved of that.

His tongue met hers with a consuming, needy sort of hunger and he flipped them in one fluid movement, pinning Cyril between the warmth of his body and his desk. Any fear she’d had of her solstice memories being tainted and distorted by all the damn lockmead went out the window.

All that heat, and need, and want, coursing through her body like wildfire? A thousand times more intense than she remembered. The feeling of his hand slipping across her throat, cradling her jaw? It sparked a tone of possessiveness that had her knees weak and her thoughts vacating.

She slipped a needy whine against his lips, and Mikael moved her like she was made of air. He hauled her up onto the worn wood surface behind them and tugged her legs around him.

The desk groaned and something metal creaked as Mikael leaned forward and ran his lips down her throat.

“Just a thought,” he whispered, and the three words turned her molten. “We could skip—”

“Boss? We— Oh fucking hells, really?”

Cyril didn’t recognize the male voice that came from the other end of the office, and her lust-addled haze may have had something to do with that, but she went deathly still.

Mikael’s eyes flared with shock before they narrowed. His attention snapped over his shoulder, a snarl peeled back on his lips. “In what fucking world do you not knock? What. Do. You. Want?”

“It can wait!”

The door clicked shut and Mikael swore a name that Cyril didn’t know.

That was probably for the best.

Mikael’s breathing was uneven as he looked at her with resignation.

“Sorry about that.” He squeezed her thigh before untangling himself from her legs and taking a step back. “We should get going, anyway.”