Carys might be a rebel at heart, but inside, she was also an intelligent, stubbornly determined woman who could accomplish anything she set her mind to. Why she had let herself fall for him, he would never understand.
“You’d be a hell of an asset to the Order, you know.” Stepping closer, he reached out to lift her chin on his fingertips. “And you’d make a hell of an adversary to anyone who crossed you.”
She grinned at him. “Then you’d better hope you stay on my good side.”
“Baby, from where I’m standing, all I see are good sides,” he said, drawing back to take a long, appreciative look at her.
She laughed, then slipped off her heels and ducked around him to walk toward the open cage at the center of the arena. “So, what happened with Slade last night?”
Without waiting for him to answer, she gave him a longer view of her tempting backside as she stepped into the cage in her black dress pants and wine-colored silk blouse. She bent to pick up his spiked gloves and steel torc from the floor where he’d dropped them after halting the night’s match.
“Jagger and Vallan said you and Slade had a disagreement.”
“Slade’s an asshole. I got tired of seeing his face around here, so I told him to get lost or I’d help him get dead.”
She swung a look back at him, eyes widened, caramel waves sifting over her shoulders. “That must’ve been some disagreement.”
“It was.” Rage still simmering in his veins when he recalled the fighter’s words and the offending intimation that he would even think for a second that he could put his hands on Carys.
Rune followed her over to the cage now, disturbed by the sight of her inside the steel mesh ring. She didn’t belong in there, and not just because she was dressed for a day at the museum.
Hell, in truth, she didn’t belong with him either, but that hadn’t stopped him from pursuing her all those weeks ago. Seducing her right into his bed that first night.
“Are you going to tell me what happened, Rune? What did you and he argue about?”
“You.”
“Me?” She pivoted, sparks lighting in her eyes as she looked at him through the wire. “What about me?”
“Slade said some things I didn’t like.” Rune all but growled his reply. “He was under the deluded impression that I might ever let him near you while I was still breathing, so I had to set him straight.”
“Oh.” Her brows knit as she walked slowly back to him. “You set him straight, did you? And what do you mean by that?”
Rune watched her hips sway with each gliding step. Hips his hands itched to touch them—to grasp onto them and drag her close. “I explained—not in so many words—that you were off-limits. I made sure he knew you were mine.”
“Am I?” A smile danced at the corners of her mouth.
She was toying with him now, enjoying his possessiveness. “You know you are.”
“Mmm, but I always like hearing you say it.”
“You’re mine, Carys.”
As she stood there, holding the accoutrements of his brutal profession in her hands, for an instant he was gripped with a dread he couldn’t justify or explain. Nor could he shake it.
Scowling, he blew out a low curse. “Come out of there, now. You shouldn’t be handling those things.”
When she didn’t obey him, he stepped inside and took them from her loose grasp. The urge to smash the gloves and torc against the nearest wall was almost overwhelming.
Carys’s hand came up to his face, caressing his rigid jaw. Fire glittered in her irises, and her smile turned a little wicked. “You defended my honor.”
Oh, she was enjoying that fact all right. The sparks in her eyes intensified, desire lighting them with a heat that Rune’s body responded to like dry tinder.
Looping her arms around the back of his neck, she tilted her head up to brush her mouth against his. “You’re my knight in shining armor.”
He scoffed. “Hardly that.”
“You are. You just don’t know it.” She held his gaze, studying him. “I would defend you too, Rune. No matter what. To anyone. To the death, if that’s what it came down to.”
The very thought froze the blood in his veins. “Christ, don’t say that. Don’t ever fucking say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Even worse,” he growled.
He wanted to feel anger when he stared into her fiery blue gaze, but it was need that spiked through him instead. Need so deep and strong, it rumbled out of him on a ragged breath through his emerging fangs.
He couldn’t stop her from caring for him. She could even love him if she didn’t have the good sense to give her heart to someone more worthy. But to say she would die for him? Christ. No man would ever be worth so much, least of all him.
She deserved to know that.
She deserved to understand that she was pledging her life to a merciless killer. Not only in the cage, but all aspects of his life. From the time of his hideous beginnings, to the half-truth he lived now. He wasn’t worthy of the love she gave him so freely.
Eventually, unless he found the will to walk away from her, Carys would one day learn all of the shame that clung to him even now.
If he had any honor at all, he’d have told her everything already. Before he’d let himself care whether or not she stayed. Before he’d let himself fall in love with her.
The words were right there now—poison at the tip of his tongue.
All he had to do was spit them out.
But then Carys kissed him. Her tongue thrust into his mouth, past his teeth and fangs, greedy and demanding. The erotic sensation of it arrowed straight to his balls. His fangs throbbed in time with the pulse now hammering in his cock, and what little honor he had was swallowed up by the consuming heat of her mouth on his.