Ruling Sikthand (Clecanian, #7)

by Victoria Aveline

If I hear you’ve dashed out into the desert in the night, understand that I will be the one to hunt you.”

She turned away from the mirror at Alno’s words, and Sikthand swayed forward. He hadn’t had time to examine that reaction when the chaperone’s question hit his brain. The golden fuck had asked to smell her.

Sikthand hadn’t watched her. Suspended in time, he’d beheld her. A goddess carved from the moon itself. Even if she left tomorrow and he never saw her face again, that vision of her would live with him until the day he joined the sky.

He didn’t want her to come speak to him because he so desperately wanted her to come speak to him.

He didn’t understand this. Didn’t know what she was doing, but her soft lips kneading his was the loveliest paralytic. Her mouth was warm and giving, her fingers gentle where they dug into the hair at his nape. His heart was stuck mid-beat, breath no longer necessary. He could nearly taste her, and then her lips parted, and her tongue swept across the seam of his mouth. Sikthand, the king harder than askait, trembled.

“This is a temporary fascination, human,” he hissed. “You are but a Season. Calamitous, powerful, consuming. But like the rains, you too will pass.” He dropped her chin and straightened to his full height, towering over her, not revealing the crippling ache constricting his stomach. “I need only weather you.”