Fire & Ice

Xander’s POV

My room walls had never been as small.

I walked round in front of the fire, my hands rolled into fists, and the heat within me was more warm than the fire itself. My wolf, Feris, tore at my flesh impatiently, insistent, clamoring to get that single thing I had promised to deny him.

Edrian.

He could be found everywhere I went in this god-damned palace. His scent was still in the corridors, and it is maddening, spiced woodsmoke, salt, something raw and unskilled that could never be matched by the most exalted in the social circle. He followed me like a curse, into my lungs with every breath, till I was drunk on him.

And now he had the audacity to stare at me the way he did at the banquet. Hurt. Accusing. Like I had betrayed him by letting Amber touch me.

As if I owed him anything.

The chamber door creaked open. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. His presence hit me before the sound, his heartbeat, his scent, the way Feris surged toward him with a feral snarl of recognition.

“Why didn’t you reject me?” His voice was low, trembling but steady enough to slice through the silence.

I turned slowly, finding him standing just inside the door. The firelight carved him in gold and shadow, his dark hair mussed, eyes burning with questions that made my chest ache.

“What?” I asked, though the word rasped like sand in my throat.

Edrian took a step forward, jaw tight. 

“If I disgust you so much. If you can’t even look at me without shame, then why didn’t you just reject me? It would’ve broken the bond and set us both free, but instead, you keep me here, tied to you, hurting… while you pretend I don’t exist.”

His words slammed into me harder than any blade. My wolf roared at the thought...reject him? Tear the bond apart?

“Do you have any idea what you’re asking?” I clenched my fists.

“I’m asking why,” he said, fire sparking in his eyes. “Why keep me if you don’t want me? Why let me bleed for something you’ll never claim?”

My control snapped.

I was close in two steps and my hand was thudding against the door beside his head, trapping him inside. He shivered but did not look away. His eyes burning mine. That obstinate disobedience set my blood on fire.

“You think I don’t want you?” I growled, low and dangerous.

His mouth opened, his breath ran faster, but he did not say anything.

My head was pressed nearer, and his scent filled me, dizzy, sweet and drive me insane. 

"Edrian, every godsdamn second, I desire you till it makes me mad. Until I can no longer fucking breathe without tasting you in the air," I confessed, "And desiring you and having you are not the same thing."

“Then what stops you?” He swallowed his throat.

I kept him completely caged by putting my other hand against the door and he could only look at me. 

"Because the will be no turning back, once i made you mine, that it but I and all I have worked for all my life will be burn to ashes."

"And what if I am willing to burn with you?" His chest swelling, and voice steady.

The words cut me like a knife. 

I gripped him with one hand on the wrist, and pulled him forcibly against the wall of the stone. He gave a gasp that I stamped down with my mouth, nothing mild or sweet or merciful, just savage hunger tearing through me like flames.

His lips were opened by pure force, and I seized his mouth with a dominance which was bruising, biting him on the lower lip until I tasted the stinging copper. His wolf was aroused under his skin, and he whimpered against me, and that voice only broke the last piece of restraint within me.

"You make me insane," I snarled at his lips, consuming his breath before he could answer. My hand caught in his hair, jerking his head back, and leaving him no choice but to accept all the violent kisses I gave him. “You think I can reject you? You think I can let you go?”

He shivered, but did not drive me off, at least not at first. His mouth answered with equal fire, desperate and clashing, his tongue mixing with mine like we were fighting rather than being intimate. His wolf sprang forward, and met mine in a terrible storm, till it were less kissing and more burning.

I leaned my palm next to his head trapping him as I bit his jaw, his throat, and every other place I had no right to bite. The scent of his arousal hit me and it was infuriating, raw, intoxicating, forbidden and I sucked it down my lungs like a drowning man in need of breath.

"Xander...” he choked, leveraged himself up a moment, eyes open, lips all swollen, breath coming raggedly. “Stop...”

The one word pierced me like a knife. Stop.

But I couldn’t. I snarled deep within my chest and once more grabbed his mouth, more firmly this time, and kissed him until he whined under the very intensity of it. My tongue possessed him all round, my teeth worked his lip till he twitched, till I had left him half swooning between pains and pleasures.

"You are mine," I sneered, and felt the taste of his resistance, his fear and his passion."You are mine even if I tear you apart."

But then... his palms against my chest, pushing me back more roughly than before. His eyes flashed, and it was not lust that they showed.

"No, no..." he said, with a shaking voice, but firmly. “Not like this. Not until you decide who I am to you. Reject me, or claim me… but stop tearing me apart.”

His rejection was like ice water plunged into a blaze. My heart sunk, my lips still numb with the flavor of him, my hands itching to take him once more. Rage and lust mingled, and made me raw, aching and hungrier than ever.

I withdrew, only because I was afraid of what I would do if i pressed against him too long. My lips pulled into a cold bitter smile.

But then he shook his head. 

“So decide, Xander. You will not have me as your half-measure. I won’t be your secret shame. When you’re ready to choose me… I’ll be here. But until then…” There was a crack of his voice, then he raised his chin in defiance. “…do not touch me again."

And he slipped from my grasp.

I was standing there, with chest heaving and fists shaking, as the door closed behind him.

Rejected.

The term was acid in my veins. Nobody had ever refused me. No one had dared. And yet Edrian, my mate, had looked me in the eye and said no.

Feris snarled in me, furious, and aroused. It should have hurt me to say the least to be rejected but it only made me harder, hungrier and desiring him more than ever.

I leaned my forehead against the door and bared my teeth in frustration.

He thought he could walk away.

He thought he could deny me.

But all he had done was seal his fate.

Because now I didn’t just want him.

I needed him.

And soon, Edrian would understand that when a crown prince chooses… there is no escape.