Free Unleash the Curse: An Imnada Brotherhood Novella by Alexa Egan

realization of his feelings. He’d not revealed them to her, but in his heart, he understood them as if they had been burned there with a brand. She could not marry Christophe. She could not marry anyone.
    Not anyone but him.
    He smiled as he kissed her, possessively, protectively. As if his future depended on it as he now knew it did. He could not envision his life moving forward without her at his side . . . and in his bed.
    She threaded her hands into his hair, wound them behind his neck, dragging him closer, nearer, as if she wished nothing between them. He would oblige.
    It took but a few subtle movements and a slow melting turn to drop them onto the bed, wound together as if to break free for even long enough to disrobe might shatter their sudden abandon. Instead she popped the fall of his breeches and shoved them down over his hips even as she kissed him with increasing sensual hunger. He dragged her skirts to her waist as his tongue danced and dove within the sweet heat of her mouth. There was no time for soft words or slow explorations. Instead the force that carried them this far, carried them over.
    She welcomed him with bold invitation, her gold-shot gray eyes greedy for all he might give. He knelt above her, pausing for a drawn-out excruciating moment to enjoy the flushed cheeks and smile on her parted lips, before he sheathed himself inside her, gasping as she closed around him, bliss already licking at his limbs as it moved like liquid fire inward toward their joining.
    It had been so long. Six months . . . an eternity. She locked her legs around him, arching into his thrusts, meeting him, matching him, taking him deeper and faster, her head thrown back, her neck taut, her hands skimming beneath his coat and his shirt to the hard plane of his chest.
    Every frenzied stroke wound him tighter as they found their rhythm, a hard and furious plunge of bodies as if they sought to outrun the sobering reality awaiting them. He ignored the battering of doubts, shoved aside the uncertainties assailing him. She would be his. He would hold to that one thought. He would let nothing shake him from his one conviction.
    She bucked beneath him, every muscle in her body going taut as she arched off the bed like a bow, her skirts rucked and ruined, her hair a wild tangle falling from its pins. Her eyes were black with desire, her mouth a scarlet bruise from his kisses. And before she could scream her release, he covered her mouth with his own, kissing away her gasping cries, her body racked with tremors.
    Her release sent him spinning over the edge, his mind fracturing, his body alive with an inferno’s rage. Magic seemed to thicken the air, dance along their skin, sparkle with each shuddering breath they took, each trembling aftershock. He cradled her against his side, her head upon his shoulder. Her hand remained resting upon his bare chest beneath his shirt. “Your heart is racing,” she murmured.
    “Funny. I thought it had stopped.”
    She leaned up and kissed his cheek.
    He opened his mouth, words boiling up his throat, and then her lips found his mouth for another kiss that left him reeling, and just like that, his arms were empty. She rolled onto her feet, shaking out her skirts with a forlorn sigh. Repinning her hair with deft feminine expertise.
    “They’ll be wondering about our absence soon. I can’t return to the others looking as if I’ve been tossed in a hay barn. I’ll sneak away to my chambers. If anyone asks, you can tell them you saw me on my way up and I make my apologies but I have a headache. Katherine will understand.”
    “I . . .”
    She turned from the mirror and the look he’d seen on her face only a moment ago was gone. Vanished beneath a frozen calmness like the still waters of an icy lake. “Did you think we could stay up here all night?” She smiled, and he wondered if she was more disturbed than she let on. Then the expression was gone and he was left to guess whether in his