Page 103 of Sharpest Court

Keil’s throat bobbed, his lashes dipping as his gaze swept over me. He shifted toward me slowly, deliberately, until my lower back dug into the counter. The faint light outlined his features, making him appear carved from gold as his palm curved around my cheek.

My pulse quickened, but only because the sensation felt surprisingly natural now—the familiar graze of his calluses, the warmth of his skin.

“I want you with me for every meal,” he murmured. “Eating the food I’ve cooked for you. I want to take you to the places I love, because I think you’ll love them, too.” He tilted my face up farther, and my breaths grew shallow. “I want your smile all the time, with those sweet little dimples.” His thumb drew across my cheek, then traced my mouth, his gaze reverent. “I want this bottom lip between mine again,” he said, and my lips parted under the heat of his touch.

It must have been another thing he’d wanted—to coax me open—because his pupils dilated the moment my soft exhale coasted across his skin.

I swayed forward automatically, but his other hand closed around my hip, pinning me against the counter. And I knew it wasn’t because of any uncertainty on his part. It wasn’t even because this was inexcusably reckless on multiple levels.

It was because, that night on the riverbank, I’d been the one to pull him down to me.

Now, under the soft glow of the kitchen light, it was his turn to set the pace.

I indulged him, even as a hazy warmth bloomed inside me. Even as he set his thumb under my chin to tilt my head to the side and then, with an excruciating slowness, brushed his lips across the corner of my jaw.

My breath hitched, and I couldn’t keep from bunching my hands in his shirt to draw him closer. But he remained unyielding, one hand still on my hip.

His chuckle rumbled against me. “Trying to undo my buttons again, my lady?”

“Only in your dreams,” I whispered, the words too airy to sound challenging.

“Hmm.” His voice deepened in agreement. “In all my dreams.” He threaded his hand through my hair, tipping me farther back. “So can you be patient with me, sweetheart?” His mouth brushed the shell of my ear, and my stomach swooped with heat. “Because never, even in the wildest corner of my imagination, did I think I would actually have you here with me.” His palm shifted against my hip as he brushed hot, barely there kisses against my throat. “If it’s just this once—if this is all I’ll ever get . . .” He guided my head back toward him, brought his lips to hover over mine. “Then, please,” he whispered, his honey-sweet breath tickling my mouth. “Let me savor you.”

My specter was thrumming now, heat pooling inside me, but I was just lucid enough to know this was a battle I wanted to win. So I leaned closer, until I was speaking against his lips, and exhaled the one word I’d never said in his presence. “Keil.”

I heard the air catch in his throat.

Then he came undone, his mouth crushing against mine—just as soft and sweet as I remembered, but more ravenous now, too. Moving with a confident, devouring energy that left me aching with my own hunger.

He broke away to grasp my waist, lifted me onto the countertop, and then we were upon each other once again, all searching hands and breathless kisses.

With my fingers buried in his hair, I tugged him closer, and his palm fell upon my thigh, right between the torn edges of the fabric. He caressed my knee, and the scrape of his calluses sent shivers up my leg.

I’d never experienced anything like this. The raw openness, the certainty. The fact that Keil was all over me, and it was exactly where I wanted him—all over me—because I knew there wasn’t an inch of me that would scare him into turning away.

But as my hands journeyed down the back of his neck, I felt the tension in his shoulders, the sense of frustrated restraint. And I realized it was because he was being stifled by the dullroot. He wanted to reach out with the whole of himself, to echo each touch with a graze of his power.

Just as I’d formed the thought, a slam sounded in the distance.

I gasped, lurching away so fast that I would’ve smacked my head against the wall if Keil’s hand hadn’t immediately cupped it, protecting me from injury.

Our eyes met over the heat of our roaring breaths, both of us tense and still entangled as we listened for more sounds.

But after a stretch of harmless quiet, we relaxed once more.

The interruption was for the best. Even if this hadn’t been a monumentally foolish moment to yield to temptation, the dullroot was still in his system. And the last thing I wanted was for Keil to be uncomfortable in any moment he spent with me.

Still, I ached as I looked at his mouth, now perfectly swollen from the kiss. I must have appeared similarly flushed, because Keil couldn’t resist drawing his hand around my cheek to trail his thumb over the outline of my lips again.

“It must be Goren,” he whispered, “finishing up training downstairs.” He kept his glazed, heavy stare fixed on my mouth. “I think I’ll kill him tomorrow.”

I laughed softly, resting my forehead against his. The violent heat was draining out of us, filling the atmosphere with a hazier, comfortable warmth. “Don’t let me drive you to murder, Your Highness.”

Keil kissed the crease of my dimple, lips lingering there. “Oh, I think you could drive me into doing a lot of wicked things, my lady.”

My smile deepened as I eased off the counter, Keil’s warm hands guiding me down. My knee skimmed his pocket, and at the sound of rustling paper, my stomach jolted.

In tonight’s chaos, I’d forgotten the other item we’d pilfered: a letter from Erik, addressed to Holden.