Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Then she felt a physical push against the memory. It shifted from one vault to the next. A vault that she’d broken into when she was much younger and been caught by the police and thrown in jail. She had been so small then, so stupid, so arrogant. The pain of it all flooded back.
She shut it off again.
“That wasn’t any better,” she gasped.
He pursed his lips. “It was. I’d keep thinking about the vault. It was more solid than the wall. Try again.”
He still pushed against her memory like it was tissue paper. She was quicker to cut him off this time, but he nodded his approval.
“Good. Good. That’s stronger. Keep that close,” he assured her.
“You think I’ll need it? Are there that many other people who can get in my mind?”
“You don’t want to find out when it’s too late,” he said. “Again.”
Kierse tried to keep her barriers up against him. For a second, she felt resistance, like she might actually be able to keep him out. Excited relief flooded through her for a single moment before Graves obliterated her defenses. They came crashing down so fast that she was instantly swept back into his gray gaze.
She was on his staircase, staring down at the king of faerie. Her body responded to the sight of him, the heat of him. Her body wanting more of what it had been given in the library, knowing it was complicated, wanting it anyway. The desire spooling out of her like a cat batting around a ball of yarn. In the middle of it, wanting nothing more than to kneel for him.
Kierse shut it off again, this time with a gasp as she pressed her legs together.
Graves smirked. “You can kneel if you like.”
She flushed from head to toe. Here in the back of a darkened limo, she could do it. She could fall to her knees for him. Let him take control. They had mere minutes before they reached the theater. How far could they get?
“You’re considering it,” he said with a sensual brush of his lips along her jaw.
“My absorption is up,” she gasped.
Another kiss down her jawline. “I don’t have to read minds to know that you want me.”
She shivered. “Graves…”
“You do want me, don’t you, Wren?”
“Yes.”
He brushed his lips against the shell of her ear. “Lower your powers.”
“More training?” she breathed.
“I want to try something.”
She bit her lip, clinging to the memory of vault breaking, and then with a breath turned her absorption off.
Instantly, her memory vanished and another memory flitted into her mind. But this was not her memory. Her eyes widened as she realized this was Graves’s memory. And it was of her.
She called his name, and he looked up, only to be blindsided by her beauty. She was standing on the staircase dressed as Titania in all her golden splendor. For a breath, she felt his desire for her. The need a bubbling, aching mess, trapped in a locked box, begging for her to break it open and steal it away.
And yes, he wanted her to kneel. As she had wanted to before him.
The memory melted, and her absorption snapped back on.
“Graves,” she whispered, breathlessly. “How did you do that?”
“It’s a new trick,” he admitted. “From the solstice.”
She reeled at the information. He had pushed a memory into her mind then, of the glen of wildflowers in Ireland that reminded him of her. But she hadn’t known he could do it any time. As if that act had changed his powers in some way. Or did it just link them?
“Is that…how you see me?” she asked, looking into those dark eyes.
“Can you not see it for yourself?”
She had assumed all of those veiled words of interest were true but layered beneath Graves’s carefully placed facade. This was stripped bare.
She swallowed as his hand trailed lower, tugging her off the seat toward him. The dress had no give to it. No slit. She could hardly move in it, and yet he repositioned her with ease. One hand putting her on her knees before him, the other wrapping loosely around her neck, a thumb to lift her chin up to meet his.
“There,” he said. His hand grazed lower down between her collarbones, then between her breasts. “Just as you wanted.”
She was breathless. Her body humming even before his lips met hers, his tongue arcing across her painted lips. She let him invade her mouth. A carnal moan left her at the first sweep of him against her own tongue, nerve endings sparking at the connection.
Fucking hell, she wanted this dress to be easier to get in and out of.
“If only we had more time,” Graves growled, his finger skimming the underside of her breast.
Kierse spread her hands on his thighs and pushed them upward. She could feel the hard length of him in his pants. She may not be able to see into his mind, but she knew precisely what he wanted right now.