Dark Prince's Desire by Jessa Slade Page B

leather-clad shoulders.
    “You set me free, Arazael, Prince of Flutes.”
    She rocked up onto the tips of her toes. Not that she had the height or strength to reach him had he resisted, but he must have unbent enough that her lips pressed to his. She tilted her head, a wordless appeal, and parted her lips in a soft, wet stroke.
    With a low groan, he opened his mouth. His tongue swept hers, locking their breath together. She tasted the stone and the storm in him, two conflicting impulses that nevertheless made her tigress growl with pleasure, wanting more and more.
    Wanting forever.
    She longed for the touch of his hands on her heated skin. Her nipples pebbled against the smooth leather of his vest, and her core melted with longing. She resisted the urge to reach up to frame his face with her hands, to look deep into his eyes and demand he answer: how could he not want this more than anything too?
    But his arms stayed stubbornly ironed to his sides. Apparently not even in fairy tales did one kiss solve all the world’s problems.
    She felt the verita luna tingling in her bones, a delicious ache. But once she changed... Missing the Second Truth had brought her here, brought her to Raze. For a heartbeat, the change faltered, the deliciousness losing to the hurt, just as she would lose him....
    Hovering on the edge of the verita luna , her senses had sharpened, so she scented the new arrival before sound or sight alerted her. The burnt odor was more bitter than the dusty smells around them, and Yelena whirled away from Raze, her pulse hammering.
    The tigress had not wanted the change or the kiss to be interrupted.
    EveStar watched them, her multi-jointed fingers writhing although the rest of her was utterly still. Her elf-maiden glamour had altered. Her pale hair stood out from her head in a twisted corona and her skin had darkened and roughened like bark.
    “I told you the wereling would destroy you.” The phae’s voice creaked like a branch in the wind.
    Raze took a step forward, putting his black-clad shoulder in front of Yelena. Guarding, as he always did, she knew. His instinctive response made her heart pound.
    “EveStar,” he said gently. “I am not destroyed. I am right here.”
    “But you don’t want to be.”
    Elation surged through Yelena, amping her heartbeat higher. The phae must see something in Raze’s aura, something he wouldn’t admit to her or himself. Was there a chance for a future, not just for the phae and the werelings, but for the two of them?
    “You are a prince of the phae ,” EveStar said. She spread her hands, her long fingers flickering eerily. “There are so few of the old ones left, and the Steel Born have forgotten. You mustn’t leave. The phaedrealii needs you.”
    The harsh stink of creosote drifted on the air, and Yelena stiffened. In this unadorned place, there were no established illusions to drain of power. Where was the frail EveStar pulling the energy?
    Like the twinkle of the verita luna that appeared at the extremities, Yelena saw a glint between EveStar’s fingers. The phae wasn’t taking energy from her surroundings, but from herself.
    “Get out of the way, Raze,” Yelena snapped. She’d had enough of the phaedrealii hurting him after all he’d sacrificed.
    He turned toward her, and she saw an angry denial already forming on his lips. But the distraction was all she needed.
    EveStar’s hands burst into flames, her long fingers dripping fire. Her twisted hair blazed up as she threw the fireball straight past Raze.
    But Yelena was already in motion. The verita luna —held in abeyance long enough—caught her in midleap. The fireball caught her too, but only scorched along her tail when she shifted direction, cat-quick. She shoved Raze down, big enough in her tigress shape to stun him before she spun on her singed tail to bound the other direction, drawing EveStar’s fire.
    The phae burned like a torch, but her scream was angry, not agonized. “You cannot have him,