11

Daxeel puts me down at the door to my bedchamber.

He isn't kind about it, not in the way he yanks me from his shoulder, as if just realizing now that it's me, and I land on my boots with a thud.

Before I can right myself, he turns to leave. He doesn't make it a step before I snatch his wrist.

His head snaps to the side. Head tilted down, his hair falls into his face, and he looks at me from beneath his lashes. A warning in his glare.

I'm undeterred. He can easily tug his wrist out of my grip, but he doesn't.

"Are you so eager to join that brawl?" I ask, then let myself slump against the door. My grip doesn't loosen, so he's tugged closer to me.

He takes that step to follow me, but his eyes don't soften.

"With Eamon and Aleana home safe," I start, "and Rune and Samick deep in a bloody fight, why don't you stay with me?"

His voice is an utterly unfeeling growl, "You made no bargain for this Quiet."

"Do I need one?" My lashes hang low over my eyes, and I know exactly what I'm doing with my lazy lean against the door, one that has the strap of my dress falling over my shoulder. "I need a bargain for my love to come to bed with me?"

My hand is smacked from his wrist. He hits it aside as he moves for me, faster than the sheets of lightning that thunder over skies.

The ache of my spine pressed hard against the door bites at me, but I keep my head leaned back and align our faces.

Daxeel's face is stone as he towers over me. "You did what you did." His hand shoots upwards and snatches the underside of my chin in a death grip.

I wince, but not before he's lifted me, my back sliding up the wall until my boots dangle above the ground. His fingers don't tighten around my throat, but I'm pinned in place.

The tips of our noses touch, the sharp coolness of his minty breath tickles my lips. His eyes are pits of ocean depths. I might like to fall into them and drown.

"This—" He brushes his soft, full lips over mine, and my lashes flutter "—changes nothing."

Softly, I hiss, "You underestimate my resilience. You are what I want, you are all I want. And I will fight for you because I didn't fight when I should have."

"Us," he growls at me. "Nari…" His rough tone softens into something mocking. "I will destroy you as you did me, I will shame you as you did me—and I will break your heart as you did mine."

His rosy lips twist ugly before he spits, literally spits onto my mouth. I flinch, but my response is a mere silent snarl.

"There are no second chances in life," he says, then to taunt me, flicks the tip of his nose over mine, a gesture that's meant to be full of affection, "but there are silly little halflings who feed their fantasies of forgiveness and delusions around the power of love."

I hold his stare. "You do love me."

"Yes." His gaze, like his answer, is so unflinching that I loosen a breath at the force of it. The tips of his fingers press so firmly into my flesh that I'm sure I'll bruise. "And I despise you."

Between our bodies, I lift my hand to my face. I don't break eye contact as I wipe away the traces of his spit, then—around a grin—my fingertips dip it into my mouth.

A shudder runs up his chest, and I feel it, every bit of it, against me.

The tips of my fingers drag over my lips. "So punish me, or let me show you how much I love you, let me show you how much I want you." One flick of the tongue over my fingers, an act he watches too intensely, and I purr at him, "Let me beg."

A sudden snarl growls through him, and in a blink, he's hit the door open and thrown me over his shoulder. In just a heartbeat, I'm tossed onto the foot of the bed, and he's kicked his foot back to slam the door shut.

Pushing up onto my knees, I watch him round on me, a fresh gleam in his eyes. More than lust, deeper than need, darker than rage—that fight in the Hall stirred his beast awake.

But all Daxeel does is stop just a breath's touch from me and slam his hand down on the bedpost. He looks down at me, a quiet storm brewing deep within him.

Before he can bark any orders at me, ones that interfere with my little schemes I've developed around the whore, I push up and rest my hands on his chest. Beneath my palms, his muscles tighten—and I fight the smile that blooms as I feel the racing beat of his heart.

I lift my chin to ghost my mouth along the exposed ink of his neck. He's unmoving. He doesn't stop me. So I slide my hands up and over his shoulders, pushing myself up, and brush my lips along the length of his neck, all the way to the underside of his jaw.

I hear the swallow of his throat. I don't react. Pretend I don't notice at all before I travel my kiss over the defined shape of his chin.

He clenches his jaw, tight.

I feel the tension of it against me. And I plant the first true kiss on his smooth, caramel skin—right at the corner of his full mouth.

Still, he is as rigid as a statue.

I lift the kiss to his soft lips.

His lashes flutter.

I savour it. I delay it. Sweet breaths I let escape me, soft lips brushing his, and he feels every bit of it.

Daxeel tilts his chin down. That slight tilt of the head aligns us completely. And I kiss him.

I kiss him softly, I kiss him lovingly—just as the whore does.

Daxeel is that desperate for me to need him. He needs me to beg for him, his touch, his love after the slight.

If he hadn't been so desperate for this to go to the whore and get some cheap imitation, then I wouldn't know how to seduce him back into me—how to win him over again.

I know now I make him feral with need. And that is power. But I don't mistake it for less than absolute danger.

So I finish with a chaste kiss to his lips before I draw back to the mattress and—with our gazes locked—I fall on my back. Loose chestnut waves fan up around my face before my head lands on the feathery pillow, and it settles into something of a halo.

I don't fix it.

I just spread my legs for him. It has the hem of my dress falling over my knees and bunching at my naked core.

But Daxeel makes no move for me.

Looking down my body at him, I see he hasn't budged from the bedpost. His hand is gripped tight around the wood, so tight that it will erupt in an explosion of splinters any second now. But tighter is the clench of his jaw as he keeps his smouldering blue eyes on me.

He fights.

Hard, he wages a battle within himself—and I fear he means to turn and leave.

I can't let that happen.

So I slide my hand down my middle, all the way to the bunched dress around my hips. His gaze follows.

I delve my fingers into the warmth he craves.

He watches.

It doesn't go unnoticed that he's positioned me to the bed, not on my knees, not on the floor—because the last time he did that, I brought him to his knees.

It haunts him, I have no doubt about it. Mocks him, like my words mocked him that night.

‘I wonder which other dark males I can bring to their knees—and will they whisper my name, too?'

Daxeel needs this, to own and claim me, shame me. He needs to balance the scales, not for his ego—it has never been about that. It's his nature, the beast, the animalism within him. Even a litalf male would have cut me down for a slight like that.

But he's trying. I see that. I'm not broken, I'm not dead, I'm not alone in my bedchamber this Quiet.

He is trying, and so I will too.

And for him, I bring myself to orgasm—and he watches.

I finish with a whisper of his name.

Like a siren's call to a lost sailor, my whisper lures him in.

Daxeel's movements are gradual and predatory. Each muscle ripples with pure power as he kicks his knee across the mattress, knocking my ankle—a silent command to close my legs. So I do.

He moves over me, oceans gleaming in the shadows of the Quiet, nothing friendly in the way they watch me, the way they pin me in place.

All I can do is look up at him as he settles to straddle my chest. Just beneath the underside of my breasts, he tugs the button of his trousers—and frees himself.

His cold eyes don't leave mine.

This—this moment right here—is nothing passionate. There is no rush of need and desperation and desire, all the things I was counting on. He keeps it at arm's length, he keeps it, me, at a distance.

And he makes sure I know this as he fists the shaft of his cock.

In just some lazy pulls, he finishes with a grunt that flexes his chest.

Scenting me. That's all he wanted from this shared time in my bedchamber. Just to get his scent on me, with a cold and cruel distance that springs a deep ache in my chest.

The warmth of his seed runs down my breastbone to my dip of my neck. He doesn't bother watching it, he only watches me from beneath kohl lines and thick lashes as he fastens his trousers.

Then he's gone.

Pushes off me with a grunt. His boots thud on the floorboards before he just… leaves.

No backwards glance, he stalks out of the bedchamber—and slams the door, hard, behind him.

I stay limp on the mattress for a beat, feeling the warmth of a necklace form over my neck, and stare up at arched, vined roof of the bedframe.

Then I clear my throat and reach for a washcloth. I can wallow in a pit of self-loathing or heartache, I can stay in bed and drown in my tears. But what's the point in that?

I still won.