And then he spoke.
“A chuisle mo chroí,” Priest said in what I assumed had to be Gaelic. The words, though indecipherable to me, held only warm, intimate praise in his cold, low voice. A juxtaposition that made me shiver with something more than the frigid night. “If you dare to test me, at least make it a worthy challenge.”
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
A brief pause for his free-form chuckle that warmed me like brandy.
Thunk.
All five knives outlining the dark circle in the wood perfectly.
I gasped when he turned against me and suddenly, I was up in his arms, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist, his hands beneath my nightgown, freezing and strong as they cupped my bare bottom.
“This,” he said gutturally, eyes edged with wildness as he looked down into my own. “This is a fuckin’ challenge. To hold you in my arms and focus on anythin’ else.”
I swallowed, but my heart seemed lodged in my throat, thrumming so hard it felt like I was choking. “You could focus on me instead.”
Priest’s smile was not a tame thing. It sliced across his freckled face, lips too red for a man, open over his white teeth like a wound over bone. When I touched my fingers to the edge of it, he snapped at me, catching the soft tips in his strong hold for an instant before releasing me. The pain sheared through me followed swiftly by heat that seared down my spine.
“You don’t want one hundred percent of my focus, Little Shadow. You wouldn’t know how to handle me.”
I sank deeper into his hold, pressing my groin to his torso in a bid to alleviate the tension I felt coiled there just waiting to spring.
“What would you do?” I dared to ask, vivid, almost violent images of passion morphing and breaking apart in my mind like a broken kaleidoscope tinged in red.
His lids lowered, eyes a narrow blade of pale green. “Just be grateful I don’t have my knives on me right now.”
I shuddered so hard he had to brace me tighter to his body so I wouldn’t fall out of his hold. “Oh.”
His laugh was sinister, the same hiss as the blades made arrowing through the air. “Oh,” he agreed. “You aren’t ready for that. You might never be ready for that.”
“For you,” I confirmed, watching the demons chase themselves across his eyes. I tightened my legs around his waist and slid a hand carefully into the side of his thick, surprisingly soft hair. He flinched slightly, eyes darkening with lust and something like panic, as if my touch was something to fear. “I’ve been ready for you for years.”
And just that quickly, Priest reverted to the man he presented to all the world. Cold, intractable as the blades he coveted. He dropped me without consideration, but waited until I landed on my feet before turning from me to retrieve his knives.
“It’s true,” I shouted to him over a gale of wind. “I’ve watched you for years. Wanted you for years.”
Priest scowled as he walked through the punishing wind, hair flying about his face, leather jacket flapping open to reveal the Hephaestus Auto hoodie beneath. He stalked right to me, his knives slotted between the knuckles of his right hand. When he raised them, the tip of two knives at my throat, I only canted my chin higher in the air to gives him space at my neck to roam.
His eyes flashed and a low growl rose from his throat to be lost on the wind.
“I am not afraid of you,” I told him, my voice ironclad, the words tossed down between us like a gauntlet. “You can try to scare me all you want, Priest. I like it.”
I gasped softly as his other hand banded over my low back and hauled me up against him. I could feel every hard inch of his upper thighs and the thick bulge at his groin that was hard just for me.
He bent down to me, his face looming and dark as storm clouds rolling in. “Don’t tempt me. I’m not some untrained boy wrapped around your little finger. I’m not even a man. I kill for sport, I love pain and fuckin’ court death daily. You play with me, Bea, you knowingly play with a monster, something more dead than alive. I’ll ruin you,” he promised.
I arched my neck into the point of the blades, felt them catch and pull sharply at my skin. My heart beat fast and strong, a staccato beat on the tight skin of a drum, but my voice was sure as I breathed, “So, ruin me.”
The night was cold and metallic on my tongue as I inhaled sharply when Priest jarred me closer still and then the only thing I could taste was him.
Hot enough to burn, the edges of my tongue curling into the heat, my inhibitions disintegrating to ash he ate out of my mouth. His groan rolled through me, dark and deep like a great dragon claiming his treasure. He curled me closer as he plundered, careful only with the hand that held the knives, angled with precise pressure at the side of my neck so I could feel the threat, but know no true pain. The feel of the steel there and the iron pressed thickly to my belly scorched like dragon’s breath down my throat to warm the apex of my thighs.