Page 154 of A Touch of Poison
Fuck, Bastian. Pull yourself together.
The admission of my true desire and knowing it was what I wanted most in the world had me shaken, but clearly our encounter with the Lady had affected Kat, too. I needed to comfort her when she came back. My problems could wait.
I cleared the plates with a word and called for the fire to burn warmer. With the curtains drawn, it felt intimate, like this was the middle of the night and not morning. I scoffed when I found candles and matches, and set to work lighting them the old fashioned way. To think humans did this all the time.
The bathroom door clicked open, and I smiled. “Look, they have candles. How quaint.” Grinning, I turned. “I thought you would like—”
Finishing that sentence was impossible.
Because in the doorway stood Katherine, hair loose over her shoulders like a spill of fire, a sheer nightgown skimming over her perfect curves.
My head spun as all the blood rushed to my cock, and I had to squeeze the mantelpiece to stop myself tearing across the room and devouring her whole.
It didn’t help that as she sauntered this way, the nightgown opened to reveal one of those thighs I’d so thoroughly worshipped.
But for all that she moved so confidently, I couldn’t miss the little note of uncertainty in the rise of her eyebrows.
Toe-to-toe with me, she stopped, and my heart thundered, demanding to know why there wasanydistance between us. I had to yank my reaching shadows close—they wanted her almost as much as I did.
She took a deep breath and raised her hands. I knew she was aiming for my chest, and it was easy to catch her wrists. Her poison-darkened fingers curled, and my ring on her finger glinted.
Mine. Yet part of me still flinched away.
“Katherine?”
The light hairs on her arms rose as she met my gaze and pulled against my hold. “You swore on your magic, Bastian. And I understand now—I know how much it means.”
She understood the depth of what I’d pledged to her. Maybe she even had an inkling what I’d told the Lady of the Lake. My heartbeat was the thundering hoofbeats of a whole herd of deer.
“Please.”
It was a miracle I didn’t lose myself right then and there.
That word. What it did to me, coming from her.
Fuck.
Drawing a steadying breath, I stroked the inside of her wrists and watched the goosebumps rise on her skin. “You want touch.”
She bit her lip and it took me right back to every time she’d tried to bite back her cries of pleasure and I’d made her fail.
Oathbreaker, part of me whispered.
“I shouldn’t…” I gave a shuddering exhale like I could blow her sweet scent from my lungs. “I shouldn’t touch you except to give you your antidote.” It felt like someone else was speaking, reading from a script of everything Ishouldandshouldn’t.
“You held me before. Didn’t you say you were just giving me water when I needed it?” She gave me a wide-eyed look and in that one second I almost—almost—believed her innocent.
But she asked mepleaseand now watched my lips, waiting for my response.
This was not the innocent Lady Katherine Ferrers.
This was my ember.
Mouth suddenly dry, I barely managed to swallow. “I was wrong. There is no ‘just’ between us. Only everything.”
With a little breath out, she lowered her gaze. Ashamed? Regretful? Didn’t she want the same thing, after all?
I released her wrists and took hold of the mass of her hair, finding it still damp at the nape of her neck. Slowly, I wrapped it around my hand until she was forced to lift her chin and look me in the eye. “Is touch all you want?” I gave a gentle tug as her hands planed up my chest, sending a streak of need through my nerves. “Don’t lie to me.”
