Chapter 12: First Moon

I do not remember crossing the palace.

I remember the stone floors under my bare feet and the heat in my skin, and the one scent that led me on.

Pine. Cold iron.

His door was already open.

Corwin stood in the middle of the room in his shirtsleeves, his hands braced on the back of a chair and his knuckles white.

His eyes met mine, and they had gone almost white.

"Linnet. Go back to your room."

"I can't."

"The moon is pulling at you. It will pass."

"It isn't the moon."

I shut the door behind me.

"Thirty days," he said hoarsely. "You made the terms. I'll keep every one."

"Then I'm changing them."

I crossed the room and put both palms flat on his chest.

His heart was pounding under my hands.

"You don't claim me and you don't mark me," I said. "Not until I tell you in words. That was the rule."

"Yes."

"I'm telling you something else in words. I want you tonight. I want all of you."

A sound came out of him, low and ragged.

"Say it again."

"Tonight, Corwin."

He took my face in his hands and kissed me.

It was not careful.

He had waited six years for this answer, and he kissed me, and he did not mean to let it leave the room.

I got my fingers into his shirt and pulled, and buttons ticked across the floor.

His skin was hot. Mine was hotter.

My cold hands had never been cold at all.

He lifted me against him, and I locked my legs at his hips while he carried me to the bed.

He laid me down and stood over me, breathing hard, looking.

"Tell me if it's too much," he said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Chose My Sister, But Now He Wants Me Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.