We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(119)

She shook her head, barely. Yet he paused at every motion that brought him nearer and nearer, waiting for her to pull away and end this madness.

His lips touched her ear.

She lost all sensation when he grazed the sensitive skin, slowly sliding his lips up. Down. Up. Blinding her. Killing her. This was nothing like the moment when he had touched her collarbone. She swallowed audibly and he chuckled beneath his breath.

She swept her trembling fingers down the hard ridges of his stomach, the heat of his skin making her heart race. An almost imperceptible groan escaped his mouth and she bit back her triumph. But he saw it, and she felt the answering curve of his smile at the shell of her ear.

Zafira shivered at the scrape of his jaw. He slipped one hand behind her head and tangled it in her hair. Tilted her head just so. The other fell to her waist, and he searched her gaze, eyes black beneath his hooded lids, dark lashes brushing the tops of his amber cheeks.

Their lips touched.

Once, barely.

Twice, scarcely.

And

her world

disappeared.

She had never expected a hashashin’s lips to be so soft. So gentle. Like the first snow across the jumu’a, melting at mere embrace. But Zafira had befriended the darkness. She had slain safin and ifrit. She was the Huntress. She was magic.

Zafira bint Iskandar did not want gentle from the Prince of Death. She wanted more.

He pulled back and read her face. She traced his scar with one trembling finger, and he murmured a curse as something wild gripped her.

She knotted her hands in his hair—pausing at the softness between her fingers, the feel of him against her—before she pulled him closer. Closer.

He shifted his hips against hers.

Zafira gasped. A low growl escaped his throat.

Her lips crashed on his. Kissing, nipping, teeth flashing as he drew her lower lip into his mouth, swallowing her soft exhale. He was everywhere and nowhere at once, both of them taking, giving, taking, giving. His tongue slid between her lips and her breath hitched, and she almost pulled back from the foreignness of it all, surrendering with a sigh. The taste of him—dates and spice—combined deliciously with the myrrh of his skin, dizzying her. He pulled her harder against him, and Zafira grabbed fistfuls of his hair.

If this was what it felt like to be lost to the darkness, she never wanted to be found again.

He pulled away and she froze at the emotion feathering his jaw.

As if he had just remembered something he shouldn’t have forgotten.

She swayed, bereft, and her hands fell to her sides when he averted his gaze. An emptiness yawned inside her. The shards of her heart that had been soaring settled back into her chest.

“The others await.”

She clutched the rarity of his voice, broken and hoarse. Her only proof that he had felt what she had.

At least a sliver of it.





CHAPTER 83


Nasir could not. He could not think or comprehend.

He was supposed to give her a distraction, a momentary lapse to jog her mind, to clear her intent of destruction. Not to be destroyed himself.

He hadn’t wanted to take it that far. He hadn’t expected something to stir within him. Filthy liar.

She stared with glassy eyes, her lips bruised a brilliant shade of red, her pale skin a glorious display of color. In that moment, he appreciated his affinity for allowing him to see with such startling clarity in the dark.

He wanted to brush the backs of his fingers across the smooth plane of her cheek, the sharp cut of her cheekbone. He wanted to touch his tongue to the splotch of black above her collarbone and relish her exhale. He wanted to savor this image for eternity.

He wanted. And wanting was a weakness.

“This means nothing,” he said abruptly, and immediately hated himself. Could he not loosen the sultan’s hold on him? His voice was a broken rasp. He still startled when her eyes met his.

It was her boldness that had set him on a path to destroy himself.

Her eyes dimmed. “Did you think I expected you to marry me after a kiss, Sultani?”

Her voice was torn, satisfying him before her words registered.

“The last man who proposed to me didn’t even get to kiss me.”

Deen. Sultani. Nasir felt the sting of her words in his rib cage. He stepped back, wanting to take the words back with him.

She was still close. Still a beautiful mess. But he turned away, because as soon as she said the word “kiss” with those lips, he ached to shove her back against the stone and dip his head to hers and—

The cool tip of a blade touched his neck.

Nasir laughed, low and humorless. He faced her slowly. Her jambiya was at his neck, arm steady. A marvel, considering how upended he was.

“Do you intend to kill me?” he asked. The sadness returned, pulling at his heart. Was there no one who truly loved him?

“Let me go,” she said.

“No,” he whispered.

“Look at you, coward,” she said.

He gritted his teeth.

“You came here for the Jawarat, intending to kill me as soon as I found it, and now you’re just an errand boy. Did Benyamin ask you to fetch me? Was kissing me his idea? How sickening it must have been to you.”

Nasir flinched, each word a physical blow. Pain struck his chest. Surely she had felt at least a sliver of what he had? Was this what the ifrit wearing Kulsum’s face had warned him of?