Kaedan didn’t lift her gently.
He seized her.
His hands closed around her waist, dragging her upward with a hunger that burned like a fever under his skin. Ariaxa gasped as her back struck the cold stone pillar, and before she could draw another breath, he was there—pressing her up onto the narrow ledge carved into the marble, forcing her higher, closer, into him.
Her hands flew to his shoulders, fingers curling into the leather of his coat. His breath hit her neck, ragged, uneven. For the first time, the perfect mask of the Emperor cracked.
And then his mouth found hers.
It wasn’t a kiss.
It was a collapse.
Kaedan kissed her like a man drowning who had finally found the surface—like she was air, heat, salvation. His lips claimed her with a force that pulled a soft, startled sound from her throat. His hands roamed her sides, her ribs, her hips, gripping hard enough that she knew she’d bruise. His entire body trembled with the effort to hold himself back—and the greater effort not to.
Ariaxa’s pulse thundered, her legs instinctively tightening around his waist to keep herself anchored. He groaned into her mouth when her thighs locked around him, his breath breaking against her lips.
When he finally tore his mouth away, his forehead pressed to hers, the tips of his fingers shaking against her skin.
“I shouldn’t touch you like this…” he whispered, voice hoarse, breath unsteady. “I shouldn’t want you like this.”
Ariaxa’s chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm. She brushed her mouth against his cheek, her voice a trembling promise.
“Then don’t stop.”
Something inside him snapped.
Kaedan surged forward, one hand bracing the stone behind her head as he kissed her again—deeper, harder, almost desperate. His other hand dragged down her spine, pulling her body flush against his. Their breathing tangled. Her fingers slid into his hair, tugging, urging, answering every movement with her own.
The world outside of them vanished.
The torches.
The cold stone.
The shadows.
It all burned away until only the heat of him and the trembling thrum of her pulse existed.
He devoured her mouth, her throat, the curve where her jaw met her neck. Each kiss felt like a vow he shouldn’t make and couldn’t swallow down. Ariaxa clung to him, arching into the press of his hands, her own lips finding every place his breath faltered.
Clothes shifted.
Fabric tore under impatient fingers.
The soft whisper of silk slipping from skin filled the air.
Kaedan’s hand cupped her cheek with unexpected reverence, but the other held her hip firmly, possessively, as though anchoring her to reality—or maybe to him. He kissed her again and again, each time with more fire, more hunger, more need.
Not as her master.
Not as her tormentor.
Not as her owner.
But as a man whose control was evaporating under the weight of an obsession he could no longer deny.
Her fingers trembled as she traced the line of his jaw. “Kaedan…”
His breath shattered.
He pressed his face to her throat, shaking, fighting something inside himself.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered against her skin. “I can’t—Ariaxa, I can’t stop wanting you. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.”
His voice was a confession dragged from somewhere raw and buried.
She held him tighter. “I don’t want you to.”
He kissed her again—slow this time, aching, a kiss that spoke of everything he had tried to bury. His hands slid to her waist, gripping her as though she might vanish the moment he loosened his hold.
The pillar behind her seemed to pulse with heat, the chamber spinning around them as they pressed together in a tangle of breath and desperation. Every inch of him trembled—not with hesitation, but with the intensity of what he was allowing himself to feel.
Every barrier between them cracked.
Every denial melted.
And when the moment finally broke—when he collapsed against her, chest heaving, hands still clenched in her hair as though he couldn’t let go—she felt his entire body shudder.
Kaedan buried his face against her neck.
A whispered confession escaped him, raw and shaking:
“I need you.”