Page 54 of Fury's Kiss


  “From whom?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Verrell,” he hissed, and I winced.

  “Stop that!”

  “He is—” Louis-Cesare cursed harshly in French, before getting himself under control. “He is a good chef. He is not my confidant!”

  He got up abruptly and began pacing, giving me a hell of a view, but I didn’t enjoy it. It looked like I’d really managed to step in it this time. There was anger written in every line of his body.

  “I have existed four hundred years. I have lived”—he spun back around—“I have lived very damned few! Tucked away in the country like a dirty little secret; imprisoned when I didn’t thoughtfully die of some plague before coming of age. Years locked away, before escaping with Radu—who promptly left me before I could learn how to live this new life of mine. Having to figure it out for myself, and once I finally did, once I began to build a family, once I began to think that finally, perhaps the future would be brighter—Christine. Just another sort of prison!”

  “And now me.” Because I sure as hell hadn’t made his life any easier.

  “You are nothing like Christine!” he said, in my face. “She was a responsibility, a mistake I made when young and foolish, and from whom I came to believe I would never be free!”

  “Then what am I?” I challenged, staring up into blazing sapphire eyes.

  “A joy.”

  His mouth crushed mine, parting my lips in a bruising kiss that I returned with equal intensity. My hands caught the sides of his face, digging into that ridiculous hair. All eight pounds of it, soft and shiny as a woman’s, that I’d started out hating and somehow grown to love. Just like I loved—

  He jerked back, and the expression in his eyes told me I must have been projecting again. I found I didn’t mind all that much. I found I liked it. Like the mouth pressed into the curve of my throat, my breast, my pelvis, the teeth and tongue altering between laving and nipping, while I stared at the ceiling and wondered if I really had gone mad.

  When I let myself think about it, how much had changed, how much was changing, it terrified me. We weren’t what we had been, not any of us. And I didn’t know what we would be by the time the war ended, or even if we’d still be alive. But right now, I wouldn’t trade it. Wouldn’t trade any of it.

  I didn’t know that he heard me that time, didn’t know if I was still coherent enough mentally for my thoughts to make sense. All I knew was that he did things I didn’t even know how to put a name to. Until I was writhing and begging and threatening and—

  He took my fingers and brought them down to his lips, and then further, to spread me open just that much more, for him. I slid in knuckle-deep, so ready—I had been ready. And then, his eyes never leaving mine, he pulled my fingers to his mouth and licked them clean.

  It felt like something broke inside, but I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t even say please anymore. Just curled my fingers in his mouth and reached for him with the hand he was no longer holding. I grabbed and pulled with no real strength, but he came, crawling up my body, letting that glorious hair drag against me, the tacky sweat on my skin amplifying the friction.

  Until he settled against me, pulled my thigh over his hip and ground, in little movements that had me sobbing and blinking at the ceiling like I had forgotten what it was, and had him groaning and talking into my neck. I couldn’t understand a word, not a word, because everything around me had become white noise; the ebb and flow of his movements counterpointed with my own so that I honestly couldn’t tell which were mine and which were his.

  Until he slid in two inches and stopped.

  “W-what are you doing?”

  “I will only ever do this the first time physically once,” he told me, apparently serious. “I want to remember everything, every movement, every scent, every sigh.…”

  I growled and flipped us, seating him completely, all in one movement, the burn just the way I liked it. “Believe me. You’ll have plenty of reminders.”

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Epilogue

 


 

  Karen Chance, Fury's Kiss

 


 

 
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