Garden of Serpents (The Demon Queen Trials #3)(27)

One kiss was fucking dangerous enough.

“Just one?” She cocked her head. “What are you so afraid of?”

One more heartbreak, and it will be the end of me. My sanity already hung by a thread. “You,” I said softly. “I already told you that.”

With her big brown eyes locked on me, she rose from the bed and wrapped her arms around my neck. Under the thin cotton, her breasts brushed against my bare chest, making me stiffen even more.

I cupped the side of her face. Fire swept through me as I leaned down to press my mouth against hers.

When our lips made contact, I immediately knew this was a mistake. If she rejected the real me, I’d lose my mind. If I fell in love completely and lost her, I’d also lose my mind. But around Rowan, I made fucking terrible decisions, and my tongue swept in to taste her. My whole body had come alive for her. I savored the way her tongue welcomed mine, and her muscles became soft and pliable in my arms. Oh, gods.

For the first time, I felt her succubus magic entwined around me, an inviting caress that stroked my back. I slid my hand up her spine, gripping her hair to tilt her head. I was overwhelmed by the urge to strip her naked and make her scream.

She would ruin me.

Arching into me, she moaned lightly, and that sound nearly made me lose the little control I had. I needed to fuck her hard against the wall. I wanted her to remember how perfectly we fit together—

I hardly knew what I was doing as I lifted her higher off the ground and she slipped her legs around me. One of her hands gripped my hair. With her back against the bedpost, I pressed my hard length against her. Had I ever been this desperate for anything before? Not even after centuries in prison.

The sound of one of the dogs barking interrupted us. Rowan broke from the spell first, pulling away from the kiss. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks pink. She’d never looked more beautiful.

“Don’t really know what I’m doing here.” She caught her breath. “You’re my rival.”

I pressed my forehead against hers, trying again to remember how to form a sentence. What had she said?

Ah…the rival thing. She thought I was dangerous.

As it happened, I thought the same about her.

Rowan had shown up in my life and thrown everything wildly off course, and when I was around her, I felt as if the world were tilting beneath my feet.

My plans for vengeance had always been the light that shone a path through madness, like the little illuminated ships floating along the river. Without vengeance guiding my way, I was in the dark again. Chaos. She brought that into my life.

“You’re the Lady of Chaos,” I breathed.

She touched the side of my face. “What?”

“Lady of Chaos. Ever since I first ran into you in that bar, you’ve lit every one of my plans on fire. You’ve destroyed everything I thought I understood.”

“Sounds dangerous. Maybe you should put me down, then.”

By the racing of her heart and the hot pulse of the magic around the room, I knew she wanted me as much as I wanted her. But how much of her desire for me was real? She was a succubus, responding to my lust magic. Lilu power thickened the air. That didn’t mean she cared for me one bit—it just meant she was high on desire.

Meanwhile, I cared about her far more than I should. And that was why I was burning my centuries-old plans to the ground.

It wasn’t her descriptions of John Robert Fox or the other mortals that had planted seeds of doubt in my mind—it was the fact that the mortal world had created Rowan. Could mortals be that terrible if they’d produced the perfect mix of terrifying and adorable, sweet and ferocious, that was Rowan Morgenstern?

“Right. I’m putting you down.” My whisper sounded choked, and it took a shocking amount of effort to release my grip on her.

She narrowed her eyes at me as she slid down my body, and my stomach turned in knots. “If you were trying to get into my head, it’s not working. The trial is still on,” she said coldly.

She moved away from me, climbing over the bed, and I felt a sharp sting at the loss of contact.

“I just wanted you to think of me and not Kas when you’re going to sleep.” Sweet Lucifer, why had I admitted that out loud? Idiot.

She shifted back under her covers, staring at me in disbelief. But I caught a hint of a smile, and then it deepened into something truly dazzling. “Hang on. Is the incubus king jealous?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I get jealous?” Gods below, exactly how often did I lie to everyone?

“Sure, you don’t.”

She saw right through me, of course. Which was strangely refreshing.

I leaned against her bedpost, unwilling to let the night end just yet. “Rowan. You saved my life in the underworld…” The rest of my thought died on my tongue before I could bring myself to say it out loud: Do you really think I was worth saving? And more importantly, would you still think that if you knew the truth about me?

She stared at me for a long moment, and a little line formed between her dark eyebrows. “Yeah, of course I did. And I’d do it again. I don’t trust you to run a kingdom without murdering everyone, but I want you alive.”

I could still taste her on my lips, sweet and salty. “What if you were wrong about me?”

“Oh.” Her expression shifted, eyes glistening. She looked sad enough that I wanted to climb over the bed and gather her in my arms again.