Her power blazed everywhere he touched her – his hands on her neck, his chest flush against hers, their thighs pressed parallel beneath them, their lips. If he had been anyone else, she probably would have burned him, but in this he outmatched her. Would always outmatch her. Her brow creased, passion and devotion so acute they verged on pain, her hands seeking his skin beneath his shirt. When he spoke against her mouth, his words burned their way down her throat and lungs and heart and sex.
He’d said it to her, when she was lying there. It hadn’t been a dream.
“I love you,” she mirrored him, leaving off the “too” because it felt silly and frivolous and cheapening, somehow, as if it was his love that made her love him. It wasn’t. She felt sure, in that moment, that she’d love him no matter what he felt, would love him until she was dust and the space between the stars. He’d grow tired of her someday, probably, and she did not care. Oh, Mordred should have considered her fierce loyalty to his father before he made two enemies in one. But he did not know, could not have known. Not even she could have guessed how much she would love this man.
It was beyond all sense.
He withdrew, too soon, and Croe tamped down the possessive desire lighting up her eyes like embers. Her right hand circled the cuff on his left, testing. It seemed innocuous enough, but it was cold…too cold, as if it were unable to accept any heat from its wearer. She frowned at it. “Where did it come from?” That seemed paramount – if they could ascertain how it had been made, perhaps they would know more of its nature. Basic forensics. “We’ll get rid of it somehow. We’ll find a way.” The conviction in her voice might have surprised her, but she felt galvanized, in all of this. A sword that had been burned and beaten and quenched and was stronger, now, than ever before. She pulled his cuffed hand from her shoulder, kissed his palm. “Mordred will have to get used to disappointment.” Then she interlaced their fingers, as he had in Granada, and gave his hand a squeeze.
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