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My body reacted before I understood why.

The scent caught at the back of my throat, and something tightened low in my stomach. My fingers stopped on the handle of the jug. I should have ignored it, but instead I drew another breath.

Heat moved through me so quickly that I went still.

My nipples tightened beneath my bra, and lower down, between my thighs, my pussy clenched hard enough to make me grip the jug more tightly. The handle pressed into my palm while I sat there trying to understand what had just happened.

Nobody had touched me. Nobody was even paying attention to me.

So why was my body reacting like this?

A low vibration began in my teeth and spread through my jaw and cheekbones. It was close to the hum I used with frightened animals, except this time I wasn’t producing the sound. I was feeling it somewhere inside myself, a deep internal resonance that seemed to wake something I hadn’t known was there.

What is wrong with you?

I forced myself to breathe out slowly, but it didn’t make any difference. The scent seemed lodged inside me now, and my pulse had become painfully noticeable between my legs. Each heavy throb was answered by the strange ache beneath my breastbone.

Across the hall, Kaelen’s head turned sharply.

His whole body followed.

Then his eyes found mine across the long stretch of tables, chandeliers, servants, and moving students.

For a moment, I forgot everything around me.

His eyes had been gray when he entered the hall.

Now they were gold.

Not hazel, not amber, and not the warm brown people sometimes called gold when the light caught it properly. This was something else entirely, bright and unnatural, the color spreading through his irises while he stared directly at me.

Another pulse of heat went through me.

I pressed my thighs together beneath the table, but the pressure only made the wetness between them more obvious. Embarrassment burned across my face. I knew I should look away.

I didn’t.

Neither did he.

There was something deeply invasive about the intensity of his stare, as if he somehow knew exactly what my body was doing even from the other side of the hall. His chest rose beneath the fitted black jacket, and his nostrils flared as he drew in a breath.

For one brief second, the control left his face.

He looked shocked.

Then his expression hardened.

His hand came down flat on the table, and his fingers slowly curled against the oak until the wood cracked beneath them.

The sound carried through the hall.

A piece of the table’s edge broke loose in his fist, and Delphine immediately pulled her hand away from his arm.

Kaelen barely seemed to notice.

He was still looking at me.

There was unmistakable hunger in his expression, and my body responded to it before I could stop it. But hunger wasn’t the only thing there. Anger had tightened his face, and beneath that was something harder to understand because I had never expected to see it in someone who seemed so completely in control.