Page 23

23

Day slid into dusk, and I slid with it, drifting in and out of sleep. I had no means of ascertaining how much time had passed. But finally, I woke to the soft rush of rain and the warmth of a hand holding mine. Fingers larger than my own laced between my knuckles, a thumb rubbing circles on my palm. It wasn’t unpleasant. Actually, rather the contrary.

My eyes fluttered open. The hand snatched away from mine, as quickly as if I’d stung its owner.

A cool breeze whispered in through the half-shuttered windows, bringing with it the cold scent of rainfall. Drops pattered on the roof, striking like musical notes. It was nighttime, and I was in the greenwitch infirmary.

Beside me, perched on the edge of the low stool as if ready to take flight, was Aric. Fully human and dressed in yet another ill-fitting set of clothes, this time too long and rolled up at the wrist. A fine growth of golden stubble shaded his jawline, and the dark circles under his eyes had deepened like inverse moons. I’d slept well, but from the way he looked, he might not have rested since our wedding night.

But he was alive. And here. The greenwitch hadn’t lied to me. Relief lightened my chest, taking with it some of my pain and fatigue.

I tried to speak; swallowed; tried again. “Are you hurt?” My voice felt and sounded like the crunch of a footstep on gravel.

Aric shook his head. His hands were on his lap now, fingers running nervously along the spine of a book balanced across his knees—how he’d managed to acquire it, since we’d left our saddlebags stranded on the road, was beyond me. The sensation of a hand in mine… surely I’d imagined that. Aric would never hold my hand.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice low and lilting. “How are you feeling?”

I paused to consider. Clean bandages wrapped my side where the bullet had grazed. I pressed gingerly on the area, assessing my injuries. My ribs ached, but it was the dull ache of an old bruise, not the wildfire of last night. I couldn’t even tell where the bullet had struck me. Whatever magic the greenwitch had cast, it was potent.

“Better,” I said. “What time is it?”

“There are no clocks here, but the sun set perhaps an hour ago. They said you were asleep all day. Do you feel up to eating? The greenwitch said it would help.”

I thought wryly of how she’d scolded the girl for letting me move. “If I’m allowed to.”

“She said it was fine. Just to be careful when you sit up.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows. Aric reached out a hand as if to help me; hesitated; drew it back. He rested his palm on the book instead. I glanced at the title and couldn’t read it; the combination of archaic Gilden and overly ornate calligraphy was more than I cared to decipher.

I turned back the blanket and swung my legs over the side of the cot, sitting upright in a single motion. The room swooped beneath me, and Aric hastily set his book aside and reached out to steady me. I reflexively put my hands on his chest, bracing myself. So that was why the greenwitch had said to be careful.

Aric caught my arms. Keeping me from falling, the way he had last night. His scent teased me again, ink and parchment and something headier. His pulse thrummed beneath my palms. My own heart beat faster in response.

Our eyes met. Aric swallowed.

“Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to sit up?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, though I’d lost track of precisely what I was agreeing to. It was hard to remember to breathe—definitely due to the bandages around my ribs, not the fact that Aric was so close I could have counted his lashes.

Aric released me, carefully, pausing to make sure I didn’t keel over onto my side. The room felt like it had turned from spring all the way around to winter again.

“Lean back against the pillows, at least,” Aric said. “You might get dizzy again.”

I allowed him to prop them up against the headboard and help me recline at an angle. Normally, I hated being coddled and tended as if I couldn’t take care of myself. It was a sign of the weakness I couldn’t overcome by force of will. But for whatever reason, with Aric’s hands guiding me, I didn’t mind nearly as much as usual.

“Here. It’s some sort of stew.” Aric handed me an earthenware bowl whose contents steamed faintly. I eyed it with suspicion, poking at it with the wooden spoon provided. Potatoes, celery, carrots, and a hearty helping of herbs whose fragrance made my stomach growl in a most uncouth way. Greenwitches did magic with herbs, didn’t they?

“I had some already,” Aric said, noting my wariness. “It’s not poisoned.”

I sniffed the pottage again. “Potatoes are a nightshade.”

Aric’s mouth twitched into a wry smile. “If a bullet didn’t kill you, I’m sure you can survive bits of boiled potato.”

I took a tentative bite. It was good, and I didn’t detect any immediate effects other than the savor flooding my mouth. The best poisons had a delayed effect, though.

Not that I genuinely thought the greenwitch would try to kill me. Yesterday I’d faced people who truly wanted me dead. If not for Aric, and a generous dash of luck, we wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t have survived.

I looked up at Aric. “Thank you,” I said. “If you hadn’t brought me here, I would have died.”

He was tracing the edges of the book again. If I hadn’t known he was constitutionally incapable of harming a book, I might have worried for its integrity. “I should be thanking you instead,” he said quietly. “You saved my life. Both of our lives. That’s twice now.”

I stabbed at a potato with the tip of the spoon, watched it split. “That’s not exactly how I would describe what happened.”

“How would you describe it, then?”

I stared into the bowl. Now neither of us wanted to meet the other’s eyes. The tension between us stretched as taut as a lyre string, every word plucking vibrations along its length.

“As a failure,” I said. “I saw the danger coming and should have kept us safe. But I didn’t do anything but let it arrive. I didn’t even fight. Instead, I got myself injured and lost us time we can’t afford, not to mention our remaining supplies. Now we’re even worse off than before, thanks to my weakness.”

“I don’t understand why you persist in calling yourself weak, when you’re clearly anything but.”

My appetite had vanished. I set the bowl in my lap so my shaking hands wouldn’t make it spill. “If you think that, you clearly don’t know me at all.”

“I know you enough to know your strength. Whatever you think to the contrary.”

His gaze was gentle, and that was something I couldn’t take. I was used to keeping up my defenses, holding my ground under attack. But Aric left me with nothing to prove myself against.

I’d spent most of my life keeping everyone at a sword’s distance, maintaining my shields so no one could see the weakness within and twist it to their own ends. But Aric had seen past my defenses, and he kept coming back anyway. He hadn’t rejected me. Hadn’t used me.

What if he was telling the truth? What if I wished he was?

Aric took the bowl from me, setting it aside. Seas, why did he have to be so gentle? I didn’t deserve gentle. Once again I had let down my family. My country.

My husband.

Aric was still watching me—brows drawn slightly together as he puzzled me out, like a foreign script he was just on the verge of reading. I turned my hands palm up, remembering the warmth of his hand on mine. The gilt scar from our wedding gleamed in the firelight.

“Aric.” My voice emerged as thin as silken thread. “What are we?”

Hesitantly, he touched the mark on my fourth finger. Skin to skin. Scar to scar. “What do you want us to be?”

I swallowed, hard.

“I’m afraid,” I said, releasing a truth. Revealing my deepest weakness. “I’m afraid of wanting what I know I can’t have.”

A muscle flickered in Aric’s jaw. “What makes you so certain you can’t have it?”

It took every ounce of my remaining strength to not look away. “I’m fairly certain it doesn’t want me back.”

A flush bloomed pink as dawn on Aric’s face, spreading down his neck towards the V of his shirt collar. “Maybe… it … thinks the same about you.”

Seas, I was drowning in him. “I don’t know why ‘it’ would have drawn that conclusion.”

Aric’s flush deepened. His hands tightened on the book on his knees, and I had the treacherous thought that I wondered what they would feel like on me.

“You’re my wife,” he said, abandoning our feeble pretense that we might be talking about anything else, and my heart stuttered at the word. “But I’m all too aware you were forced into this marriage. I’ve never expected you to want me, much less love me.”

My apprehension seized onto the easier emotion of anger. I flared up, snatching my hand back to my chest. “That’s rich, coming from you. I don’t understand this game you’re playing. You look at me as if you want to kiss me, and then you pull away as if I’m poison. You can hardly even bear to share a bed with me, and yet you hold my hand while saying that I don’t want you—”

Aric shook his head sharply, his eyes locking on mine. “It’s not a game. It’s a weakness. I’m afraid, too.”

His words sliced through my protest like broken glass. I stared at him, my thoughts as scattered as summer stars.

“Oh.” I could barely manage a whisper.

“Bianca,” Aric said. My name was as sharp as a hook from his lips, reeling me towards him whether I willed it or no. He leaned forward, bracing himself on the headboard so that he hovered over me. “There’s never been any question that I wanted you. I wanted you even when I thought you intended to kill me, even though I knew I should be running as far from you as I could get. I wanted you to my own humiliation.”

I stared up at him, speechless.

“You terrify me, Bianca.” Aric was close enough that I could feel the whisper of his breath. “I can’t stop wanting you, even if it breaks me.”

Heat rushed to my face, my stomach, bloomed between my legs. The way he looked at me, hungry and tentative and tender all at once, he couldn’t be telling anything but the truth.

“Aric,” I whispered, a confession for us both, “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you.”

Aric’s eyes went wide. He lifted a hand towards my face as he had in the inn, hesitated before making contact.

I made an impatient sound. Before I could lose my nerve, I seized him by the collar with both hands, pulled him in close, and kissed him.

Aric froze, his entire body rigid with surprise. Then, all at once, he softened into me, his mouth matching perfectly to mine.

I’d thought Aric cold, like stone or steel. Now I realized how wrong I was. He burned like untamed magic, like the slice of a blade against skin. His kiss sang through my veins, lighting every nerve in my body with a cascade of sparks.

Aric made a low sound that sent heat rushing through my core. His hands claimed the curve of my waist, his thumb digging into the jut of my hip. He slid one hand to my stomach, finding the hem of my shirt and slipping beneath it. Cool air touched my skin; by contrast, Aric’s hands blazed where they traced my ribs, skirting over the bandages. Too light. Too gentle. I arched into him, the ache in my ribs going unheeded against my need to close the distance.

Only for Aric to stop. Pull back. He withdrew his hands, leaving me hot and craving with need.

“Bianca.” He bit his lip, sending a frustrated pulse of yearning through me. “We don’t have to do this. I—I don’t expect—”

Doubt speared through me, cooling my desire. I remembered our wedding night, just before everything had gone so disastrously wrong. Let’s get this over with. The visible strain in his trousers’ fabric suggested Aric didn’t feel the same reluctance now, at least not physically, but his hesitation wasn’t something I could ignore.

I swallowed hard. To want and not be wanted in return felt like laying my heart bare to the blade. But we’d started this, and it was too late to pretend I hadn’t opened myself to the possibility of being hurt. Whatever damage happened next was something I had to survive.

“Aric,” I said softly. “Do you not want to do this?”

He shook his head, once, sharply. “That’s not what I meant. I just—I don’t—I know you value your duty. And I don’t want you to feel like consummating our marriage is something you have to do, if it isn’t what you truly want for yourself.”

So that was why he’d drawn away at the inn—he had wanted to kiss me, but he’d read my own desire as stemming from obligation. For once, however, duty was the furthest thing from my mind.

I met his eyes. “Aric. I don’t know how to make it any clearer that I want you. All of you. In every sense of the word. In a way that has nothing at all to do with duty.”

Aric swallowed. He sat beside me on the bed, putting us eye to eye. I lifted my hand, letting my fingertips trail along his jaw, rough with a trace of golden stubble.

“Say it again.” His voice was hoarse. “That you want me.”

“I want you, Aric.” I drove my gaze into his, showing him the truth. “I want you even if it breaks me, too.”

Aric caught my hand and pressed it to his mouth. His eyes were soft, pupils blown wide with desire. It gratified me to see him undone.

“Tell me how you want me, then.” His fingers traced my waistband, making me arch into his touch, aching for him to slide lower. “Tell me how to break you.”

Seas have mercy on me. The place between my legs was molten, and he hadn’t even touched me there yet.

My mouth was dry. I moistened my lips, hot with the awareness of how Aric followed the motion, his gaze dropping to my mouth before returning to my eyes. “I want you on your knees.”

Slowly, holding my gaze, Aric sank to his knees on the floor.

“I—I want you to touch me.”

He splayed his hands over my thighs. His thumb moved upwards, brushing lightly across my center. Even through the layers of fabric, his touch sweetly burned. My breath quickened. I tipped my head back and braced my weight on my hands, a groan escaping my throat. I needed more.

“Tell me, Bianca.” Aric brushed his thumb over me again. “Tell me what you want.”

How could he expect me to form words when he was unraveling me like this? With an impatient sound, I fumbled for my waistband, trying to get my trousers down over my hips. Aric gave a startled laugh. He slid his hands beneath my thighs, lifting me up to assist me.

The motion sent a wash of dizziness through me. I winced. I’d forgotten my injuries.

Aric froze. “Did I—”

I leaned forward to meet him, tangled my hands through his hair, and kissed him again, muffling his question. He laughed into my mouth, surprised, and then his hands were on me. He eased my trousers down the rest of the way and cast them aside on the floor. His fingers traced my inner thighs, delicious heat blooming everywhere he touched.

Aric’s mouth moved to my jawline. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The nausea had already passed, and I’d experienced worse on countless days of my life. I could tolerate ten times that just to keep Aric pressed against me. “You won’t.”

I shuddered as his lips scorched a trail of kisses down my throat.

“Then keep telling me what you want. Take me with you.”

I shivered again. How was he holding himself together so well? I was already close to the edge, and he’d barely even touched me.

“I want you inside me,” I whispered.

A low sound escaped Aric. Maybe he was closer than I’d realized. He pushed me onto my back—gently, almost too gentle despite my injuries—and climbed onto the bed, kneeling between my thighs. He slipped a hand between my legs. His thumb circled my most sensitive spot, and I arched into him, a small, desperate cry breaking free.

“Please,” I gasped.

Aric slid two fingers into me, his thumb returning to the center of my need. A shudder racked through my entire body. My hands clenched on the blankets as he found a rhythm. Seas, I was drowning. He was the one on his knees, and yet I was the one at his mercy.

It wasn’t enough. I needed to break him, too.

I opened my eyes. Aric was watching me, flushed and vulnerable with his own desire, hair disheveled from where I’d run my hands through it. His eyes were like the sky; I could lose myself in them, counting stars forever.

“Not like this,” I managed. “I want you closer.”

I dragged the hem of his shirt free of his trousers and reached for him, my hands skating across the plane of his stomach. Aric stilled, his breath catching.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

He really was going to break me. “Virtues, yes, I’m sure.” I dragged in a breath, trying to collect my senses. Maybe it wasn’t for my sake he was hesitant. “Unless you don’t want that?”

“No, I—I do.” Tentatively, Aric placed his free hand on top of mine. Pressing me against him. Accepting my touch. Both of us held still, poised on a precipice.

Aric took a breath, as if making a decision. And then he turned my hand, gently, so that my fingers slid beneath his waistline, dipping into the crease of his thigh. His hand tightened on my wrist, then released me, giving me another chance to pull away.

“Show me. Please.” His words were only a breath, but I knew what he meant. Show me that you want me. That you want this.

I did. I had never wanted anything more. I slid my hand deeper and closed my fingers around him.

Aric’s eyes fluttered, a spasm running through his entire body. “Bianca,” he groaned, and then he kissed me again, his mouth hungry, desperate, as if a dam had broken and now his desire poured out in a torrent. His hand faltered in its rhythm. I needed him closer. Nearer. I gave him a long stroke that sent a tremor through him again, then released him, reaching for his hips, drawing him towards me to claim him as mine.

He paused to pull his shirt over his head. I helped him with his trousers, hurried, eager. Then he was over me on hands and knees, his hair a tangled mane around his face, his eyes like the heart of a fire. He was so beautiful it took my breath away. I’d seen him naked before, but not like this. Never like this, hard and wanting, nothing of himself hidden away.

“I want you, Aric,” I told him again, and pulled him towards me, opening myself to him.

He was gentle at first, sliding into me slowly, the way made easy by my own hot want. It was my turn to tremble as he sank deep within me, his mouth lowering to claim mine. Aric moved his hips, long, slow thrusts so exquisite I could hardly bear it. Oh seas, he was going to shatter me. I would fall into a thousand pieces, completely undone. There was nothing of my walls left to hide behind.

I tilted my hips so he could take me deeper. Aric responded to my needs as readily as if we’d done this a hundred times, moving faster, harder, relinquishing my mouth and gripping my waist instead to pull me into him. I arched into the pillows with a cry. He lifted my leg over his shoulder and kissed my inner thigh as he thrust deep into me, his thumb finding my center—

Like a wave, I crested and broke. Shudders rippled through me as I fell apart, crying his name—a plea for mercy, a surrender. Aric followed me over the edge moments later. With a deep groan, he pulled out and spent himself over the sheets, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

For uncounted moments we lay tangled together, both of us breathing hard as our bodies slowly cooled. I ran my fingers through Aric’s hair, reveling in the silken feel of it. In the wonder of having license to touch him freely.

Aric shook himself and lifted his head from my neck. He looked dazed, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, either.

“Stars, Bianca,” he whispered, saying my name like a prayer. “You’re incredible.”

I kissed him, deep and slow. Showing him again, with my body as well as my words, how much I wanted him.

By the time we broke apart for air, he was hardening again. An answering heat rekindled within my core. Perhaps it was time to see what else his previous lovers had taught him—whether he was as adventurous as I hoped.

I reached for him. Aric raised his head to look at me, lifting one brow incredulously.

“Truly?” he asked. “Were you not satisfied?”

“Oh, I was satisfied.” I gave him a wicked smile. “But I’m not done. This time, I want you to tell me what you want.”

Aric laughed helplessly, as if I’d finally bested him. And then he obliged, whispering all the things he wanted to do to me, and then ensuring I had ample demonstration.

His mouth, learning the shape of my body. His hands, passionate but gentle, leaving trails of fire everywhere he brushed against my skin. Every touch a question: Do you want this? Every touch an answer: Yes, and yes, and yes.