We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

Once, barely.

Twice, scarcely.

And

her world

disappeared.

She had never expected a hashashin’s lips to be so soft. So gentle. Like the first snow across the jumu’a, melting at mere embrace. But Zafira had befriended the darkness. She had slain safin and ifrit. She was the Huntress. She was magic.

Zafira bint Iskandar did not want gentle from the Prince of Death. She wanted more.

He pulled back and read her face. She traced his scar with one trembling finger, and he murmured a curse as something wild gripped her.

She knotted her hands in his hair—pausing at the softness between her fingers, the feel of him against her—before she pulled him closer. Closer.

He shifted his hips against hers.

Zafira gasped. A low growl escaped his throat.

Her lips crashed on his. Kissing, nipping, teeth flashing as he drew her lower lip into his mouth, swallowing her soft exhale. He was everywhere and nowhere at once, both of them taking, giving, taking, giving. His tongue slid between her lips and her breath hitched, and she almost pulled back from the foreignness of it all, surrendering with a sigh. The taste of him—dates and spice—combined deliciously with the myrrh of his skin, dizzying her. He pulled her harder against him, and Zafira grabbed fistfuls of his hair.

If this was what it felt like to be lost to the darkness, she never wanted to be found again.

He pulled away and she froze at the emotion feathering his jaw.

As if he had just remembered something he shouldn’t have forgotten.

She swayed, bereft, and her hands fell to her sides when he averted his gaze. An emptiness yawned inside her. The shards of her heart that had been soaring settled back into her chest.

“The others await.”

She clutched the rarity of his voice, broken and hoarse. Her only proof that he had felt what she had.

At least a sliver of it.

CHAPTER 83

Nasir could not. He could not think or comprehend.

He was supposed to give her a distraction, a momentary lapse to jog her mind, to clear her intent of destruction. Not to be destroyed himself.

He hadn’t wanted to take it that far. He hadn’t expected something to stir within him. Filthy liar.

She stared with glassy eyes, her lips bruised a brilliant shade of red, her pale skin a glorious display of color. In that moment, he appreciated his affinity for allowing him to see with such startling clarity in the dark.

He wanted to brush the backs of his fingers across the smooth plane of her cheek, the sharp cut of her cheekbone. He wanted to touch his tongue to the splotch of black above her collarbone and relish her exhale. He wanted to savor this image for eternity.

He wanted. And wanting was a weakness.

“This means nothing,” he said abruptly, and immediately hated himself. Could he not loosen the sultan’s hold on him? His voice was a broken rasp. He still startled when her eyes met his.

It was her boldness that had set him on a path to destroy himself.

Her eyes dimmed. “Did you think I expected you to marry me after a kiss, Sultani?”

Her voice was torn, satisfying him before her words registered.