Life's a Golden Platter, Baby

Eyes like summer stars blazed at him from a delicate lattice of eyelashes, Ziva acting the part of a wolfess wiser than her years, gunning for Idal’s attention like a comet coming in for landing. She thought she was playing coy. She thought she orbited along the same thin line as Idal, matching him step for daring step, not realizing that her arc was shuddering and shaking and the merest miscalculation would plunge her overboard - a meteorite shredding past the atmosphere to destroy herself upon the hard stone of the planet’s surface. Would the Tempest girl crash and burn if the handsome prince suddenly lost interest? If he turned his snout up at her, if he rejected her outright, what would Ziva do? She’d mentioned her standards to test Idal, hoping to test the power of her feminine charms . . . those efforts were darling. Idal was reminded of a pup gnawing on her father’s tail, practicing the killing bite of a hunt.

Now, in his same situation, Ingmar always acted outright cruel. An image of the silver-and-onyx heir sneering in Ziva’s face, punishing her for her presumptions and her boldness, glinted vividly in Idal’s mind. Ingmar didn’t appreciate a girl who didn’t know her place. For Idal, those types always proved the most entertaining. Where Ingmar shut them down, Idal egged them on. And on. And on. Because even if the ladies ended up crying, he could blame their tears on the scrapes they’d given themselves through their own desire to chase the sun. “Do I make you want to lose your morals, Miss Ziva?” His smile twinkled at her, white fangs catching the glow of her ultramarine lanterns as he laughed, his china-blue pools crinkling at their corners. Does she even know what that means? Did she want to find out? The strawberry blond turned his face to smirk at her, learning in close enough to kiss. “If you lost your ethics, who would help you find them again?”

The heat of her body made the atmosphere around them cozy, warm. Or maybe that was Idal’s own thundering pulse, the fires of lust stoked deep in his abdomen, because damn this spitfire intrigued him. He was so used to pursuing and wooing - and here he had a young creature caressing him with her starving eyes and responding to his games with an enthusiastic choreography of her own. So what if her efforts were clumsy, uninhibited, childish? Idal deserved a good ego stroke now and again. He liked to think his attention helped Ziva blossom in her own right.

An intensity thrummed in her posture after the golden knight nudged at the top of her crown. Electricity snapped between them. Idal caught the azure crackle radiating out from her dilated pupils as he settled back onto his haunches. Here comes the Little Girl stumbling in three . . . two . . . oh? Ziva did not stutter. She did not bristle with a barely contained blush, backpedaling wildly toward safer waters with young men her own age, the realization that this courtship was perilous filling her expression with horror. No. She pushed nearer, upper body following the draw of Idal’s frame when he leaned away, watching him the way she might watch blood leak from a wound. Salivating. “Does that scare you?” Idal’s ears switched upright. His mouth parted to let out a gasp that did not arrive. The flames of her comet licked at his haunches, kindling them, and it was his upper hand that wavered in its course. Of course he wasn’t afraid . . . what a ridiculous question. Silly girl. Ravenous girl. Except the next lyrics to pour smoky and sultry from Ziva’s lips had Idal’s breath jumping in his chest - and her face was buried in the pale sunwashed fur of his chest, and she was so warm and small and pretty and brave and foolish that Idal suddenly wanted to be foolish too.

His reply was to bring a forepaw under her chin to lift her head up. Then his tongue was skimming the corner of her lips . . . gentle and slow, and his nose traced its path up her cheekbone so he could kiss the corner of one glowing eye. “I can handle a secret kiss or two.” Carefully, Idal’s paw slid from her chin and down her neck, toward her shoulders, pulling her to him. “But a relationship? Miss Ziva, we hardly know each other.” Words in her ear again, giving himself over to just a quick flick of his tongue near the base. “Are your morals lost so easily?” And Idal bit down - not hard enough to break the skin, or even bruise, but exactly the right amount of pressure to send a zing down the she-wolf’s nerves.

Better Eat it UP

Avian Prince | Abandoned his throne | Heartless | xathira