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CHAPTER TWELVE

I brush my lips against Alexei’s, a light, unassuming touch. I move with caution, knowing that he may not choose to return my kiss.

The moment our lips touch, my heart kicks inside my chest. I gasp at the tingles that shoot through me, my inner power rising in response to the contact.

Just moments before, he calmed my power with his touch. Now… it’s igniting.

One brief touch is not enough. I press my lips to his again, drinking in the contact for a moment before I pull away.

I want more, so much more, but I force myself to stop.

For an excruciating moment, he remains completely still, his eyes widening like storm clouds about to break.

Then, he sucks in a sharp breath, his hand flexes against my back, and he releases the leg that remained captured between us, allowing me to slide completely toward him.

My legs curve around him, and our lower halves press up against each other. His free hand rests lightly against my thigh and curves around the base of my hip.

He pauses for a beat, his mouth close to mine, before he presses a tantalizingly gentle kiss against the corner of my mouth.

I wait for him to deepen the kiss, but he brushes his lips across mine to plant another light kiss on the other corner of my mouth, then one against my cheek and over to my other cheek, trailing kisses to my chin, each one soft.

His fingers tangle in my hair, stroking through it, making me shiver all of the way to my toes.

Closing my eyes, I soak up the touch I’ve wanted for so long. My hands find all of the muscles of his back, loving the way they shift as he moves.

I draw him closer, boldly running my fingers into his hair as my lips seek his.

This time, he kisses me with a hunger that takes me by surprise. His fingers tighten around my hip, his other hand stroking up my back. I arch into him, losing myself in his kiss, sinking so far beneath the surface that I forget where I am and why I’m here.

I tilt my head to give him full access to my neck as he trails hungry kisses to my shoulders, pushing aside my dress strap to kiss my collarbone all the way from my shoulder to the space between my breasts.

When I wrap my legs around his waist and press my lower half against his, he responds with a groan, hooking his arms beneath me to lift me further up the bed and settle us onto it.

He pushes himself up off the surface so he doesn’t crush me while my legs remain firmly clasped around him, refusing to let him go.

The rubies glint on his finger, pressed into the mattress at my eye level, reminding me what I need to do.

Trying to focus on my goal, I pull his left hand into my right, stretching our arms up so that his body is drawn down to me. From this position, he’ll have to crane his head back to see his outstretched hand and my own brushing against it.

With my left hand, I reach for the nearest spell, hoping it’s the one I need. My fingers brush a leaf. Without looking at it, the words burn inside my mind.

They seem so natural…

I whisper against his lips, “Crimson crush come closer.”

He raises his head to give me a quizzical look, but I quickly draw his lips back to mine to distract him.

With a brush of my fingertips over his ring, the rubies fall into my palm. I push them under the pillow at my head, drawing my fingertips back to his arm so he’ll think nothing of it.

Free to do what I want now, I find the base of his shirt, tugging on it, wanting to know the feeling of his bare chest on mine.

He pulls us up into a sitting position, allowing me to draw his shirt over his head, dropping it onto the bed. I run my hands across his bare chest, exploring all of his muscles, loving the way his eyes close as I brush the hard planes of his stomach.

He responds with hungry kisses pressed to my neck, kisses that make me melt into him, his hands grazing my shoulders.

The vines that wrap around my arms and torso respond to his touch, willfully giving way as he draws the material slowly to my waist. He explores every new patch of skin that the descending material reveals, making me gasp and sigh.

By the time the material gathers at my waist, he has stroked and kissed every inch of my chest, and my body is burning.

I press against him, my chest against his, seeking relief from the intense need raging through me.

It doesn’t help. I need all of him.

I reach for his belt buckle, but it’s impossible to undress him positioned like this.

As I brush his stomach again, tugging at the top of his jeans, he groans against my mouth. “Tansy…”

His breathing is as erratic as mine, his full lips slightly parted.

I chase his mouth, wanting to feel his lips against me—all of me—but he pulls away, drawing his hand to my cheek.

He gives me a shake of his head. “This isn’t what you want. We can’t… do this…”

I’ve never abandoned my inhibitions like this before, let alone around him. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

I shiver, my mind a mess of desire and now confusion. Is he pushing me away? If this is the only chance I have to be with him, then I’m not letting it go.

“Why not?” I challenge him. “Why can’t we?”

His arms close around me, stroking my naked back in ways that contradict his declaration. “I know you, Tansy. This is a compromise. It isn’t what you want.”

I tip my head back to see his face, sudden anger coursing through me, my instinctive power rising with it. “How do you know what I want?”

He remains calm—he’s always calm even when he’s angry—and the fact that he’s regained his control so quickly infuriates me even more. As soon as my magic sparks between us, his palm spreads flat against my back, and at that single touch… all of the anger drains out of me.

My instinctive power calms. Just like before, it feels like he’s deliberately draining it from me.

I search for a sign that he’s accessing his assassin’s magic, wondering if that’s how he’s doing it, but there’s no telltale silver haze around him.

He says softly, “Because I want the same thing. I want to feel what you feel.”

My heart thuds inside my chest, a frantic beat. I search his eyes for emotions I desperately need to see. Are they there? Maybe hidden behind the assassin’s mask?

Stop kidding yourself.

I drop my head to his shoulder. My eyes burn. I can’t stop the tears that suddenly slide from my eyes and drip onto his shoulder. “But you can’t.”

His voice is a rumble at my ear, his heart still pounding against my palm where it’s squished between us. “You deserve more, Tansy.”

I whisper, “What if this is a compromise I’m willing to make?”

He’s quiet. Too quiet. His breathing comes slowly under control. “You might tell yourself that, but it isn’t true. You have to—” He swallows. “You have to let me go. We have to let each other go.”

He pulls back, cupping his hand to my cheek. “You have so much love in your heart that you’re afraid to show anyone. You have so much to give. I want you to find someone who can return it.”

His gaze follows the tear trickling down my cheek. “You need to find someone who can give you everything, not just this.”

His hand brushes my shoulder, grazing my collar bone. My body burns, and all I want is to kiss him again.

What he doesn’t know is that I tried. I went on a few dates, had a few coffees, tried to be normal, but nobody compares to him, nobody’s presence makes my heart hammer and at the same time makes me feel like I belong, like I’ve found my place in the world.

“No!” My voice is a near shout.

Wrenching out of his arms, I push away from him up the bed. I wrestle my arms through the straps of my dress while the vines do the rest, curling around the gauzy material to slide the dress back into place.

“I refuse to find anyone else, Alexei Mason. I choose you.”

I push my way through the plush cushions, disguising my movements as I sweep the rubies into my fist. I find my feet on the floor at the end of the bed and clench both my fists in defiance—one to hide the rubies, the other… because anger is my friend right now.

Thorns rise along the edges of the vines, a defensive mechanism that I can’t stop.

Alexei’s eyes widen in surprise. “You choose me, despite the fact that I can’t love you?”

“Yes.” My voice breaks. “I want you to be able to choose too. Whether or not you choose me, you deserve to know your own heart.”

I want him to be able to feel again, for his heart to be whole, for his emotions to be returned. Once he does, he might not want me. He told me once that I was a logical choice: I was a witch like his mother, and I was both powerful and beautiful—his words, not mine.

Once logic no longer dominates his decisions, he might turn away from me. I’m prepared for that because at least I’ll know it’s a real choice, not one made by default.

I inch toward the cube’s entrance. “I’ll do whatever it takes to give you back your emotions.”

His forehead creases. “Tansy…?”

I take a step toward the cube’s front, praying it’ll open immediately. Praying Alexei doesn’t come after me.

His hand rises. “Please wait.”

His quiet request reaches me just as the magic in the cube begins to trigger. I pause, sensing the magic is ready to release me from the cube. All it will take is a small step.

He twists toward me, still kneeling on the bed, his gaze burning through me. His fists press into the tops of his thighs as if he’s fighting an inner war.

He curses quietly beneath his breath before he says, “I take it back. I don’t want you to leave.”

Surprise builds inside me. If I want to take the rubies to Mother Kadris, I should go now. The longer I delay, the greater the chance Alexei will see them, but his request makes me pause.

The weight of this moment settles onto my shoulders, freezing me to the spot.

He approaches me slowly, climbing across the bed’s surface. He’s still naked from the waist up. His hair is ruffled, but he doesn’t try to fix it. His disheveled appearance makes me want to close the gap and ruffle it even more.

Damn . How does he do that to me with a single look?

He slides off the edge of the bed, standing two paces from me in the confined space. “I don’t know what love feels like, but maybe this is the closest I’ll ever get.”

His gaze holds mine. “I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to be that guy. I should push you away. I should tell you to find someone better.”

“You did,” I whisper.

“But that’s not what I want.” He takes a deep breath, his big chest rising and falling as he takes a step toward me. “I want you in my life. I want to be selfish. I want to give you everything. I want to promise you…”

He doesn’t reach for me. Instead, he takes a knee. The space is barely big enough to accommodate him as he gazes up at me. “Tansy Gray, I will never betray you or walk away from you. Even if my heart can’t give you what you need, I will be yours always. If you want me.”

My heart is in my throat.

The rubies are like a burning flame inside my fist, filling me with guilt. I wish I’d left them hidden on the bed. I never expected him to stop me like this, to change his mind like this.

I never expected him to make any promises.

Confusion is a storm inside me. Alexei said he doesn’t know what love feels like, but the way he’s looking at me, the way he touches me, the way he has always treated me is beyond mere intellectual thought. It can’t all be logic. Can it?

Or am I seeing what I desperately want to see, interpreting his soft touches as feeling, interpreting the tone of his voice as caring, not as carefully calculated decisions on his part to appear that way?

Despite my confusion, one thing I am sure of: he is always true to his word.

So I allow myself to wonder… What if I accept the life he’s promising me?

What if I don’t get the revival spell? What if I accept that he’ll never love me, but he will do what he promises—never walk away or betray me.

I’ve always kept my emotions to myself. I found it so hard to show them, so hard to make myself vulnerable, but now I carefully drop to my knees, leaning in to wrap my arms around his big chest, careful not to reveal the rubies.

I tip my head back to press a kiss his lips. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. No matter what happens.”

A smile breaks across his face. A weight seems to lift from his shoulders. He scoops me up into his arms. If I didn’t know better, I would believe he was happy.

But I have a new problem. I nearly dropped the rubies, barely closing my fist in time. One of them slips to the edge of my fingers, and fear of discovery makes my palms sweat.

“Let’s go dance,” he says.

“Dance?” I gesture at the bed, my cheeks suddenly burning. I was counting on returning to the bed, where I could hide the rubies again. “But don’t you want to…?”

He gives me a lazy smile. “I have a lifetime to explore your body, Tansy. Let’s take it slow.”

He draws my arms from around him and the movement is a little too fast. I fumble with the rubies. He helpfully grasps my hand, and?—

One of the stones glints between my fingers.

He freezes. His gaze flies to his ring and back to me. Confusion floods his features. “Tansy, what are you doing with those?”

I wrench out of his grasp. “I need them.”

“What for?”

“I can’t tell you.” I dart toward the front of the cube, whispering a spell as I go. “Love linger, love delay, love stay.”

He lunges in my direction. “Tansy, wait!”

My spell takes hold, and he stops in his tracks, his feet glued to the floor. It won’t hold him for long, but it’ll give me long enough to get the rubies to Mother Kadris.

As I step through the entrance, the cube releases me.

I glance back one more time, poised in the opening.

The look on Alexei’s face freezes me to the spot.

Betrayal. It floods his features like a knife to my heart.

His gray eyes are a storm of thunderclouds as he asks, “Was any of this real?”

My voice fails me. He must think it was all a ruse to steal the rubies from his ring.

I force myself to speak. “All of it was real. I love you, Alexei Mason. I will do anything to give you the chance to love me back.”

I spin and race away before he can break free of the spell.