Page 31 of The Blood Queen

My eyes are shut, my body sinking into the mattress, my head on Samson’s chest. Everything is soft and safe, but as I emerge from a dream I’m already forgetting, my nose fills with the smell of earth and moss, sweat and soap, lavender and cinnamon, and him. It jolts me out of the shadowy depths of sleep, but I don’t open my eyes.

I feel. I feel the warmth of him soaking into me. I feel the hard lines of his muscles under my touch. I feel the soft thrum of a vein under my fingertips, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the sheer life of him.

I have never understood the way fae will enthrall a human, keep one as their plaything. Until now. I would keep Samson beside me forever if I could, and the fact that I don’t think I would need an enchantment to force this to happen, that Samson seems somehow to want me the way I want him?

I’m giddy at the idea, my head gone soft and fuzzy, like I’ve just drank a whole barrel of nectar wine.

It’s only because I’ve been so focused on the sensation of Samson under my touch that I notice the way his breath hitches.

He’s awake.

We both are, but we both don’t let go, because this?

This is the dream we want to linger in.

I feel his hand lift, his fingers wind through my hair, stroking down my face. “I know you’re awake,” he says in a low voice.

I keep my eyes pinched shut. “No. I’m not.”

He laughs, the sound soft and rumbling in his chest. “Liar.”

“If I’m asleep, we can stay in bed,” I point out. “Forever perhaps.”

This time, his laugh is short, a burst of mirth that makes my head shift. “No law in this realm or the human world that says a bed can only be used when you’re asleep.”

Something about his tone makes my eyes fly open. I lift up on my arms, looking at him. His red hair is splayed over the white linen, his gaze soft with sleep. But a wicked smile curves his lips.

“Samson Calthorpe, I think you are implying something distinctly unbecoming for a lady to consider.”

A worried look flashes over his features, but before he can put it to words, I add, “Good thing I, for one, am not a lady.”

I fling the bedcover back and swing my leg over his hips, straddling him. We’re both in our nightclothes still, but my dark hair slides over my shoulders as I lean down, framing his face, hiding us from—

From everything.

And in that warm darkness, I lower my face to his, my lips to his, my heart to his.

My kiss is raw, needy, and he gives me everything willingly. When I start to pull away, his head lifts up, and his arms wrap around me. He hesitates for just a second—probably remembering my injuries—but I’m healed now. I don’t hurt.

But I do ache.

It’s a different sort of pain, building inside me, a tension that coils tightly, a desire I cannot name, but it winds around me, through me, pulling me closer to him.

I break the kiss, gulping at air, and Samson lunges up, claiming my neck in tiny bites that set my skin on fire, that leave me gasping in an entirely different way from before. My heart flings itself around my ribs, and when he kisses that hollow spot on my collarbone, his tongue flicking out to taste my skin, my arms give out, and I fall against the length of his body, crashing into him.

I run my hands over his arms. They’re strong and hard, my fingers dancing over the veins atop his muscles, and even though my touch is featherlight, he trembles, the little hairs standing up on end.

This is power the likes of which I’ve never held before. I can unmake him with a touch, but when he presses his lips against mine, my body rising up to meet his with nothing but this damned linen between us, I know the same is true of him too.

We make and unmake each other with nothing but a kiss, a whisper, a touch.

Samson’s hand clutches the hem of my nightdress, and I feel the tension there, the desire he has to rip it away, and I’m nodding already at his unasked question, eager for the same thing he wants—

“Daughter.”

Ice replaces all the fire in my veins, and I squeak, the sound caught between rage and sheer mortifying embarrassment. Samson scrambles back, and I sit up, my eyes going immediately to my father in my bedroom watching me in bed with Samson.

“What are you doing here?” I screech at him as Samson grabs a pillow from the bed and holds it over his lap, his face as red as his hair.