He finally says something. “I’d participate. So well, you wouldn’t walk straight the next day.”
More footsteps pass. I’m in a room smaller than a jail cell and Josh has his hands on me. Too bold for my own good, I lift his hand and press his fingertips into my cleavage, just to see what happens.
“That’s okay, walking is overrated.”

“Let’s put our weapons down, okay?” He raises his hands to show he’s unarmed. His hands are big enough to encircle my ankles. I swallow. To hide my awkwardness, I mime taking a gun out of my pocket and toss it aside. He reaches into an imaginary shoulder holster and takes out a gun, putting it on his planner. I unsheathe an invisible knife from my thigh.
“All of them.” I indicate under the desk. He reaches down to his ankle and pretends to take a handgun out of an ankle holster.
“That’s better.” I sink into my chair and close my eyes.
“You’re deeply weird, Shortcake.”

“Before you go. I don’t know. We’re in love, right? Just—” He stands abruptly and reaches for my shoulders, jerking me across the table and planting his mouth stiffly on mine. Our eyes remain open and horrified. My breath is trapped in my chest, and I count out three eternal beats before we burst apart.
He fixes a convincingly loving smile on his face, speaking through his teeth. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“I’m going to go gargle bleach now,” I tell him.

With scarred hands, the demon pulled a scrap of black cloth from a
hidden pocket in his armor.

She glimpsed black boots. Dark, scalelike armor over a tall, muscled body.
Wings. Great, black wings. A demon’s wings.
But the male face that stared through the mists, grave and lethal … it was beautiful, despite the fact that his hazel eyes held no mercy. He spoke again, in a soft voice that promised pain.

Ruhn whispered, “Day?”
Lidia Cervos looked over a shoulder. And she said with quiet calm in a voice he knew like his own heartbeat, a voice he had never once heard her use as the Hind, “Night.”

He halted there, poised on the brink. “Tell me what you like,” he said, kissing her neck. “Tell me how you want it.”
“I like it true,” she said, hands running down his face. “I want it real.”

Baxian walked to one of the curved walls full of skulls. Didn’t seem to care that he was a foot away from the barrel of her gun. He ran a finger down the brown skull of what seemed to be some fanged Vanir, and said, “Through love, all is possible.”
The rifle nearly tumbled from her fingers. “What?”
Baxian peeled back the collar of his battle-suit, revealing brown, muscled flesh. And a tattoo scrawled over the angel’s heart in familiar handwriting.
Through love, all is possible.
She knew that handwriting. “Why,” she asked carefully, voice shaking, “do you have Danika’s handwriting tattooed on you?”
Baxian’s dark eyes became pained. Empty.

Spoiler(cliquez pour révéler)

“Because Danika was my mate.”

“Ariadne, meet Ruhn,” Flynn crooned. “Ruhn, meet Ariadne.”
She held Ruhn’s stare, and he stilled as he caught a glimmer of something molten course beneath the skin of her forearm, making her flesh look like … scales.
Ruhn whirled on Dec and Flynn. “I was gone for a day! Sunrise to
sunrise! And I come back to a dragon? Where did she come from?”
Dec and Flynn, the three sprites with them, pointed to Ithan.
The wolf winced.
Ruhn glanced back at the dragon, at the hand clutching the blanket around her. The slight hint of the brand on her wrist. He studied the sprites.
“Please tell me they’re at least here legally,” Ruhn said quietly.
“Nope,” Flynn said cheerfully

They spoke for ten minutes in the hall without exchanging names. He’d just been Connor’s little brother, and she hadn’t given her name and he’d forgotten to ask for it, but by the time Connor poked his head into the hall, Ithan had decided he was going to marry her. He’d attend CCU, play sunball for them and not Korinth U, who’d already been wooing him, and he’d find this girl and marry her. He suspected they might even be mates, if he was right about that gut tug toward her. And that would be that.
Then Connor had said, “Looks like you met Ithan already, Bryce,” and Ithan had wanted to dissolve into that disgusting dorm carpet.

Hunt had managed to prop himself up on his elbows when Ithan yelled from the other side of the apartment, “Please: have sex a little louder! I didn’t hear everything that time!”
Bryce burst out laughing, but Hunt could only stare at the little droplet that ran down her chin, gleaming in the dim light of her star. She noted the direction of his attention and wiped off her chin, rubbing her fingers together, then licking them clean.
Hunt growled, low and deep. “I’m going to fuck you senseless.” Her nipples were hard as pebbles, and she squirmed against him. Nothing but those little lace panties separated her sweetness from his bare thighs.
But then Holstrom shouted, “That sounds medically dangerous!”

My mother went through it.
I went through it.
I’ll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it.
I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. “It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.

“Lily,” he whispers, still holding me tightly. “I know this is the last thing you need to hear right now. But I have to say it because I’ve walked away from you too many times without saying what I really want to say.”
He pulls back to look down at me and when he sees my tears, he brings his hands up to my cheeks. “In the future . . . if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again . . . fall in love with me.”
He presses his lips against my forehead. “You’re still my favorite person, Lily. Always will be.”
He releases me and walks away, not even needing a response.

We’re both upset and kissing and confused and sad. I’ve never felt anything like this moment—so ugly and painful. But somehow the only thing that eases the hurt just caused by this man is this man.

“Did you . . . Did you just kiss me?” He sounded puzzled, and maybe a little out of breath. His lips were full and plump and . . . God. Kissed. There was simply no way Olive could get away with denying what she had just done.
Still, it was worth a try.
“Nope.”
Surprisingly, it seemed to work.
“Ah. Okay, then.” Carlsen nodded and turned around, looking vaguely disoriented. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, reached the water fountain—maybe where he’d been headed in the first place.
Olive was starting to believe that she might actually be off the hook when he halted and turned back with a skeptical expression.
“Are you sure?”
Dammit.
“I—” She buried her face in her hands. “It’s not the way it looks.”

“Adam.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “There will be only one bed.”
He frowned. “No, as I said it’s a double—”
“It’s not. It won’t be. There will be only one bed, for sure.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “I got the booking confirmation the other day. I can forward it to you if you want; it says that—”
“It doesn’t matter what it says. It’s always one bed.”
He stared at her, perplexed, and she sighed and leaned helplessly against the back of her chair. He’d clearly never seen a rom-com or read a romance novel in his life.

Rosie: SAY IT. SAY IT OUT LOUD. Say. It.
Lina: Chill, Edward Cullen.

“We both lead different teams, and we don’t work on the same projects, but we see each other often.” He sent me a side-glance. “And if we don’t, I make sure we do. I try to catch her on her break, steal a glance or two in the hallways, pass by her office without having an excuse. Anything that will put me in her head for just a few moments a day.”

Aaron’s head dipped, his mouth coming close to where his fingers had been a few seconds ago. Almost as close as it had been when we danced. “It’s like you want me to beg. Is that something you’d enjoy? Me begging?” His voice sounded so … intimate. Hushed. But it was his next words that scattered my thoughts all over the place. “Is that what this is? You like bringing me to my knees?”

His arm reached out in my direction, his gaze holding mine. I knew what he was about to do. I knew. The long fingers attached to that massive palm spread out as they met the object in front of me. The coffee pitcher. I narrowed my eyes, watching how his hand curled around the pitcher’s handle.
He dragged it all the way across the surface of the oak desk. Very slowly.
Then, he nodded his head.
Infuriating blue-eyed grudge-holder

He didn’t even blink as he talked, looking straight into my eyes. And I didn’t think I did either. I didn’t think I was even breathing. “All the time I wasted so foolishly. All the time I could have had with her.”

Kenji grins. “Okay then. Let’s go get our girl back.”
“My girl,” I correct him. “She’s my girl.”
Kenji snorts as we head in the direction of the compounds. “Right. Minus the part where she’s not actually your girl. Not anymore.”
“Shut up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatever.”

I feel myself pale. I don’t know how to tell him I had no immediate plans to go back out there. Certainly not to fight—not after what happened to James. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure what we can do.”
Kenji stares at me, confused. “What do you mean? We have to get her out of there. Which means we have to break her out of there, which means we’ve got to plan another rescue mission.” He shoots me a look. “I thought that was obvious.”
I clear my throat. “But what about James? And Brendan and Winston? And Castle? We’re not doing too well over here. Is it okay to just leave them here and—”
“Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Aren’t you in love with this girl? Where’s the fire under your ass? I thought you would be dying to get to her right now—”
“I am,” I say urgently. “Of course I am. I’m just worried—it’s so soon after they bombed Point that I just—”
“The longer we wait, the worse it’s going to get.” Kenji shakes his head. “We have to go as soon as possible. If we don’t, she’ll be stuck there forever, and Warner will use her as his torture monster. He’ll probably kill her in the process without even meaning to.”
I grip the edge of the counter and stare into the sink.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.

“I can leave.” Yet, as he speaks, his body contradicts him. He continues to kiss me. His hand hitches up my shirt, sliding over the plane of my stomach. How I’ve longed for him to touch me there again…
“Leave, and I will find you,” I whisper breathlessly in reply. “Leave me here, unsatisfied and yearning, and I will hunt you down, Eldas.”

In the morning, when Roshar saw their faces he rolled his eyes. “I want my tent back,” he said.
Kestrel laughed.