2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

I faced forward, and Rhys dragged his mouth along the back of my neck, right over my
spine, just as I shifted against the hardness pushing into me, insistent and dominating.
Precisely as his hand slid a bit too high on my inner thigh.
I felt the predatory focus go right to the slickness he’d felt there. Proof of my traitorous
body. His arms tightened around me, and my face burned—perhaps a bit from shame, but
—
Rhys sensed my focus, my fire slip. It’s fine, he said, but that mental voice sounded
breathless. It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting—
Because you’re so irresistible? My attempt to deflect sounded strained, even in my
mind.
But he laughed, probably for my benefit.
We’d danced around and teased and taunted each other for months. And maybe it was
my body’s reaction, maybe it was his body’s reaction, but the taste of him threatened to
destroy me, consume me, and—
Another male. I’d had another male’s hands all over me, when Tamlin and I were barely
—
Fighting my nausea, I pasted a sleepy, lust-fogged smile on my face. Right as Azriel
returned and gave Rhys a subtle nod. He’d gotten the orb.
Mor slid up to the spymaster, running a proprietary hand over his shoulders, his chest,
as she circled to look into his face. Az’s scar-mottled hand wrapped around her bare waist
—squeezing once. The confirmation she also needed.
She offered him a little grin that would no doubt spread rumors, and sauntered into the
crowd again. Dazzling, distracting, leaving them thinking Az had been here the whole
time, leaving them pondering if she’d extend Azriel an invitation to her bed.
Azriel just stared after Mor, distant and bored. I wondered if he was as much of a mess
inside as I was.
Rhys crooked a finger to Keir, who, scowling a bit in his daughter’s direction, stumbled
forward with my wine. He’d barely reached the dais before Rhys’s power took it from
him, floating the goblet to us.
Rhys set it on the ground beside the throne, a stupid task he’d thought up for the
Steward to remind him of his powerlessness, that this throne was not his.
“Should I test it for poison?” Rhys drawled even as he said into my mind, Cassian’s
waiting. Go.
Rhys had the same, sex-addled expression on his perfect face—but his eyes … I
couldn’t read the shadows in his eyes.
Maybe—maybe for all our teasing, after Amarantha, he didn’t want to be touched by a
woman like that. Didn’t even enjoy being wanted like that.