"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 2 - Vengeance Of Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

hated herselfbecause she was cold enough, hard enough, callous enough that shecould betray
him, when all she wanted to do in the world was run tohim and lose herself in his embrace.

She saw his pain reflected in his eyes, and noted hisbody’s change in posture. He denied what she
said with rigidshoulders and clenched fists before he denied what she said withhis words. He told
her, “I came for you,” and in thosewords he put his longing, and his passion.

Tears burned in the corners of her eyes. She hungered for him asmuch as he hungered for her;
their obsessions were equal, if notidentical. “I know. I wish — ” she said, the wordsblurting out
before she could stop them. But she got control. Shehad not survived to adulthood — Karnee in a
world where Karneemeant death — by giving in to her impulses. She straightenedher shoulders
and swung her hair out of her face and glared at him,forcing herself to remember that he was
Sabir, and that her familyhad died at the hands of Sabirs. She remembered the burning bodies,she
remembered Sabir soldiers standing around the pyre laughing toeach other, and she forced herself
to put him with those men in hermind. “What I wish doesn’t matter. I knew you werecoming. I
knew from that night in Halles that you would be comingfor me.”

“You want me as much as I want you,” he said.

He took a step forward, toward her green haven, and she liftedher chin and crossed her arms over
her chest. “I don’twant you,” she told him. “The Karnee part of medoesn’t control me, and I don’t
want you.”

She saw the ghost of a smile flicker at the corners of his lips;she realized that she had as much as
admitted that the Karnee partof her did want him.

He took another step toward her, and a third.

She did want him, gods forgive her. She didn’t want to hurthim. She didn’t want to make him her
enemy.

He said, “You’re more beautiful in real life than youwere in my visions.”

She licked her lips. “You are, too,” shewhispered.

The rational part of her mind looked at the two of them standingthere and screamed insanity. The
other part of her — the partthat accepted magic, however unwillingly — knew that what
washappening between them fell within the realms of wizardry. She hadfelt lust, and this was not
it. She had felt love, too, if only forher family . . . and this was not love, either. The worldhad
narrowed down to her and him, and to the blood pounding in herears and the tingling in her skin
and the sudden hollowness in hergut.

He came to her then, hurrying, and for an instant she forgotherself in her hunger for his touch.
For an instant, she forgotwhat she was about to do to him.
He rested his hands on her shoulders and she exhaled once. Shecould never have found the words
to describe the perfection of histouch, the rightness of their bodies together. She would have
beenlost there, and all of her ideals and aspirations with her.

But the knife materialized out of nothingness at Ry’sthroat, and behind the knife, Hasmal. She
pressed the palm of onehand flat against his chest and said, “Be still.”