Page 96 of Taken By Shadows

He leaned in, and my lips parted in needy response.

Kaed’s breath mixed with mine as he came closer.

The quickening of my heart threatened to swallow me in its deafening beat.

His eyes were vast, pupils wide as they pinned mine.

Every time I looked at them, there seemed to be more shades of blue. Shards of turquoise were scattered amongst the crashing waves of azure and cobalt. There were even tiny flecks of cyan that lit them up from within when he focused on something.

My breath tumbled across my lip, and I felt his own breath come to meet mine.

His hand shifted from my temple to rest where my ear lobe kissed my jaw. My pulse fluttered under his touch, and I bit my lip at the conjured memory of his teeth scorching along my skin.

Panic played with the rhythm of my heartbeat again as I realised this was happening.

I might have fleetingly imagined touching those lips, those cheekbones. His hips on mine.

Something thrilled through me like a murmur of a thousand bird wings.

Kaed was responsible for everything I was now living.

He was the reason I was heating and coiling and resisting the urge to rub my thighs together to alleviate the tension building inside me. He was to blame for everything coursing through my blood right now. Anger and need.

I’d never felt something so intense from the mere desire to touch someone. Or have them touch me.

Kaed’s lips were a hair’s breadth from mine, his dark lashes shielded his eyes as they dipped, and I couldn’t read anything in their oceans.

“Is there someone down here?” a sleepy voice called.

A growl grated low in Kaed’s chest, and his hand flexed into a fist as it came away from my jaw.

It felt like a void had opened up and filled with hollow air at the absence of his touch.

He was standing straight now, the picture of decency as he banished the shadows and turned to see Audrie rubbing at her eyes.

Audrie had been mostly back asleep by the time I’d coaxed her to her door.

Kaed walked beside me as we turned the corner to my room. His languid movements had stiffened, and his back rippled with the effort to restrain something in him.

His presence felt like a cord ready to snap. As though he was seconds away from losing control on a leash he held for himself. I could practically hear the leather wrapped around his hand protesting the strain.

I wanted to turn to him to tell him to leave me be. But there was another unyielding draw to turn around to him and have his hands on me again. Even his fingertip had felt intense.

So I didn’t turn at all.

Here in the dark, I could pretend he was no one. I could forget he was the person who had abducted me to this city. I could pretend he was just a beautiful male.

And in the dark, I could admit to myself that I wanted him.

I knew in my bones he was darkly terrifying, not because of the power he wielded. But because of the urges he awoke deep inside me. The way I unnaturally deviated from what I knew I needed to do just to stare a little longer at him.

Kaed reached past me, and I thought he was going to resume the position he’d found himself in in the foyer. Instead, I heard the soft click of the door handle to my room, and he pulled away.

He left me there without so much as a word. Faster than I could see, a breath moved the air, and he had vanished into the hazy shadows of the early morning.

My heart thundered into the emptiness.

Fae male bastard. My insides squirmed in protest at the unanswered tug on them.