A groan escaped him as he nipped at my lip. I squirmed beneath him as he said, “In fact, I think I might hate you for the way you make me feel.”
I pressed my hips against him as the feeling in my middle seemed to grow, become more intense. “How much do you hate me?”
Xander’s eyes flashed as his jaw hardened. His voice was deep, raspy, as he pressed his lips against my jawline. His kisses were forceful, hard even, as he murmured, “I hate you more than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
Then he reclaimed my lips, pushing me harder against the wall.
Seconds became minutes as we explored each other in a way that I hadn’t even known existed.
Everything I thought I had known about kissing—which was, admittedly, only what I had been able to glean from eavesdropping—had evaporated the moment Xander’s lips touched mine. With every beat that passed, with every brush of his tongue, I felt myself melting against him.
Everything about this male infuriated me.Everything.
From the way he spoke to the hard line of his jaw when he got upset, he frustrated me to no end. No one else had ever made me feel this way. And yet, here we were. Doing something entirely unexpected. Something dangerous. Something that I knew was wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this. He made it clear. He hated me.
The problem was—and it was a problem—it felt all tooright.
I leaned in against Xander, intent on running my fingers through his hair when he grabbed my hand. He shoved my arm against the wall.
“No touching,” he hissed.
“You’re so bossy,” I muttered as I pushed against him. I could feel him smirk as he deepened our kiss. We were melting into each other when a voice came from behind us.
“I told you they’d be here, Jo.”
Change of Plans
“Dammit.” Xander pushed away from me, his eyes wide as he walked a few steps back. He shoved his hood off his head, running his hand through his hair. His muscles were tense as he paced like a caged animal, pinching the bridge of his nose.
A sharp stab of pain bolted through me at the sight of the regret that flashed across his face, before I grabbed it and shoved it down. I couldn’t get hurt over something that meant nothing.
And that’s all that kiss was.
Nothing.
It was a distraction, nothing more.
Xander had made that perfectly clear. He hated me. I hated him. That was simple. And simple was all I had time for.
Pushing myself off the wall, I crossed my arms as I glared at Daegal and Jo. They were standing a few feet away, both of them sporting matching expressions of mirth.
“Are we interrupting something?” Jo smirked as she glanced between Xander and me. “Because if so, we can come back later…” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“You weren’t interrupting anything at all,” I replied quickly, ignoring the urge to raise a finger to my tingling lips. “We were just talking.”
Xander growled under his breath, but it was Jo’s knowing eyes that caught mine as she smirked. “It didn’t look like talking from here.”
“Let it go, Josephine,” Xander huffed. His voice was deeper than normal, his eyes dark and stormy as he crossed his arms. “What happened to meeting us at Traitor’s Bridge?”
Daegal shook his head, and a vein popped in his jaw. “Change of plans. I have Seen many paths for today, but only one of them will result in all of us getting out of Thyr alive. We have to gonow.”
Xander nodded, as though the Fortune Elf’s words made complete sense to him. I, on the other hand, was utterly lost.
I shifted on my feet. “Excuse me? Can someone explain to me what exactly Daegal can do? What does it mean, he Saw many paths?” I gestured to Daegal. “How exactly does your magic work?”
“He’s a Fortune Elf,” Jo replied, as though that answered all my questions.
“I know that,” I ground out through clenched teeth, “but—”