Burning Skies by Caris Roane Page B

her breasts looked like, felt like.
    His scrutiny stopped at tailored and wool. She’d come from Phoenix in late June where it was hotter than Hades right now. So she must have dressed for … Seattle.
    Something about that made him smile, a little smugly perhaps. “Did you have a nice trip?” he asked, shocked again at the hoarse quality of his voice.
    “Would you stop that,” she cried as she turned back to him.
    “Stop what?”
    “This whole room smells like a licorice factory.”
    Ah, yes, the one defining quality of the breh-hedden, the giving of specific scents, male and female, meant only for the other, detected only by the other. She was, for him, the other.
    “All I’m smelling is honeysuckle, Havily. When I’m around you, that’s all I smell. Fucking honeysuckle. Clouds of honeysuckle. A rain forest of honeysuckle.”
    She shook her head and frowned. “You mean you don’t smell this sharp fennel scent?” She waved an arm about to encompass the room.
    “No, not at all. Just you. ”
    He crossed the room to stand near the window. He looked down at the view below, as he often did, but drew no closer to her than six feet. Less separation and he’d take her in his arms, he’d kiss her, he’d force himself on her as he’d tried to do that last night at Endelle’s palace. Given her scent, she’d probably succumb, so shit.
    He turned slowly to watch her. She faced the window now as well and was beautiful in profile, her nose a lovely curve, her lips parted. Her hair was an exquisite auburn; her complexion, a delicate cream enhanced with peach blush over her cheekbones. Her eyes were a light green like translucent jade. So beautiful. Once more, his groin responded. Okay, so maybe looking at her wasn’t a good idea, either. “So, again, why have you come?”
    “I need you to stop the dreaming,” she blurted, her gaze skating to him then returning to look well beyond downtown, far out into Puget Sound.
    Of all the things he had expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. How the hell had she construed their nocturnal engagements as something he instigated? “You’re kidding, right?”
    Her porcelain cheeks developed bright spots of color as she once more turned toward him, her shoulders pulled back, her chin high. “What does that mean?”
    “I think you know what it means. You come to me in my dreams, vampire, not the other way around.”
    Confusion once more flitted over her eyes, her beautiful light green eyes, the same color … yeah … as the banding on his wings, just as Medichi had once observed. She shook her head back and forth. “That’s not the way it is. You summon me and I can’t seem to resist. I’m here to beg you to stop calling me to your bed.”
    His jaw shifted back and forth. He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I awake and you are riding me  … every damn time. Think about it, Havily. Isn’t that the way it always happens?”
    She took a step back and dropped her purse as her hand flew to her chest. Her cheeks now flooded with color. “Warrior, please. The whole thing is distasteful and very wrong. I came to ask you to stop, not to have you throw the experience in my face. You have no idea how hard this is for me, to come to you, to ask this of you. I never wanted to see you again.”
    “Of course not,” he muttered. “Not for perfect Havily Morgan to engage with a hedonistic captain of industry. You do know that my corporations provide millions of jobs around the world, don’t you?” Why the hell had he gone down this road, as though he needed to defend his choices? What did he care what she thought of him?
    Her nostrils flared and her chin rose higher still. “You deserted your brothers-in-arms. I will never forgive you for that! How many ascenders , how many mortals have died because you couldn’t bear the war any longer? How many, Warrior Marcus? I swear I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
    He crossed his arms over his