Page 45 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

“Come here,” Misha says, patting the ground between his legs. The sun has fully set and we’re settled around the fire he skillfully

assembled in the cave-like space he created for us beneath the soaring pine. “You’ll be warmer if we stay close.”

I scoot closer until we’re shoulder to shoulder. “I didn’t realize how cold it gets in the mountains at night,” I say, shivering.

He chuckles. “That’s not going to do much.” He shifts and the next thing I know, he’s sitting behind me, my backside snug

between the V of his thighs. It’s like we’re on the horse again, only this time we have the crackling fire before us and the

stars peeking through the branches above.

My pulse kicks up. There is absolutely no way I can play this cool, but I’m going to try. “I swear if I didn’t know better,

I’d think you were trying to seduce me, King Misha.”

I feel his warm breath in my hair and his chest shake against my back. “I promise you that when I’m trying to seduce you,

you’ll know.” He wraps one arm around me, big hand splaying across my ribs. With his free hand, he tucks loose hair behind

my ear. “Though if I don’t plan to seduce you, sitting with you this close might be a special kind of torture.”

My stomach swoops. “Might? You’re not sure?”

He’s quiet so long I wish I could take the question back. How embarrassing that I’m pushing him to tell me where he is with

all this. “It’s been a big day for you—with your brother and Shae and...” His arm tightens around me. “If your mind’s a

little fuzzy because of all that, no one could blame you. So, no. I’m not sure. As much as I’m dying to touch you, really touch you, I don’t want to take advantage of how vulnerable you are right now.”

I turn, rolling to my knees so I’m kneeling between his spread thighs before pointedly arching my brow. “I think you’re projecting.”

His lips twitch. “You do? Please, indulge me.”

I lift one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, as if this isn’t exactly what I’ve been wishing for since... well, since the first time I laid eyes on him, if I’m honest. “I had a lot happen today. It’s true. But I’d argue that of the two of us, you’re the one who’s vulnerable right now.”

He props his hands behind him and leans back. “Me? Vulnerable? This I have to hear.”

“Well, yeah. You have the whole I am king business, but right now those kingly powers aren’t even working properly. I’m guessing that delivers a pretty hefty blow

to your ego, and while I’m sure it would be much easier to get around without that thing weighing you down, I can’t imagine

what this would do to your confidence. And given how old you are, you might even have trouble—”

He cuts me off with his mouth. A hard kiss that is somehow simultaneously playful and demanding. He guides me down, leading

me onto my back and repositioning our bodies so he’s hovering over me. When he pulls away, he can’t seem to tear his gaze

away from my mouth. “I promise, I will have no trouble.”

I shift beneath him, drawing a knee up so he can settle between my thighs. I feel the proof of his claim pressing into me

and draw in a ragged breath.

“I’ll admit that I’m perhaps a little vulnerable,” he says, his voice suddenly soft. He scans my face. “I’ve dreamed of you.

This face. These eyes.” He dips his head into the crook of my neck and breathes me in like I am oxygen and he’s been starving

for air. “Your smell.” He props himself up on his elbows and stares down at me, lust darkening his eyes.

I’m afraid to move. Afraid to blink. Afraid this will all turn out to be my dream.

He cups my face in his big hand—thumb tracing across my cheekbone, then along my jaw. “Do you have any idea what a kick in

the gut it was to see you like this the first time?” He leans forward and trails the bridge of his nose over mine, our breath

mingling, his lips so close. “I had all these feelings for you that I couldn’t trust because you weren’t who you’d claimed

to be.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I understand now.”

But maybe I need to share some of my vulnerability too. “When you saw me like this the first time, you asked if my appearance

was supposed to be a joke.” I feel his surprised inhale, but make myself continue. “That hurt, Misha. And I’ve been carrying

that around.”

He opens his mouth and then snaps it shut again, pure confusion written on his face. “I don’t think you’re hearing me. When

I say I dreamed of you, I don’t mean after you went missing. I dreamed of you before you ever came to my castle. After I locked

you up and saw you like this the first time, I thought you’d gotten into my head somehow. You were her. You were the female

I’d dreamed of so many times. The one I’d convinced myself...” He swallows. “I didn’t think I’d ever see her outside my

dreams, and there you were. I thought you were being cruel. Thought you were taunting me by appearing as the female I’d never

met but pined after for months.”

I swallow. “So you weren’t disgusted by me?”

His eyes go wide. “Are we even speaking the same language?” His eyes scan my face, down to my breasts and back up. “No. Not at all. Never.”

“It’s just those words...”

“Were horribly out of context, and I’m sorry.” He skims his thumb across my bottom lip. “I thought you were my enemy and when

I saw you like this, I wanted you more than ever. You’re beautiful, Felicity.” He pulls back enough to sweep his gaze down

the front of me. “What I feel for you doesn’t change when you’re in a different form, but when I see you like this, as you

truly are, it’s as if the clouds have parted.”

“Don’t just say things like that.” My chest is so full of need I can barely breathe. I slide my hand behind his neck and pull

him close again.

He leans his forehead against mine and smiles down at me. “If it’s not words that you want, is there something else I could

offer?”

“Why do you think I was in your dreams? What was I doing?” The corner of his mouth lifts in such a mischievous smirk my cheeks

go molten. “That’s... well... I suppose I didn’t need to feel insecure about that, then.”

He rasps out a laugh. “Not at all.” He cups my face and strokes his thumb up the column of my neck. “As for the why, I asked

myself that for months, and before I saw you like this the first time, all I could figure was that you were some manifestation

of my subconscious. That I was lonely and my sleeping mind tried to fix that by giving me this beautiful female whose presence

made me feel warm and lustful and... happy —content in a way I’d never felt in my waking hours.”

“And what do you think now?”

He’s quiet for a long time, his expression turning solemn. “I think you were a promise from the Mother. I think she wanted me to know my partner was coming. That with you I wouldn’t have the love I’d always hoped to find but something even better.”

I slide a hand behind his neck and pull his mouth down to mine, nipping at his lips and savoring the feel of his weight pressing

into me.

While we kiss, his hands work their way down the front of me, loosening the laces at the front of my shirt, and I tug his

tunic from his pants. He pulls back to let me lift it over his head and toss it to the side. I lift off the ground enough

to pull my arms from my sleeves and let my shirt fall to the ground. When I lie back down, he doesn’t follow.

Maybe I would feel uncomfortable or insecure, maybe I would feel anything other than undiluted need, if it weren’t for the

way he looks at me, his gaze sweeping across every dip and curve of my exposed flesh.

“I was wrong,” he says, gaze scraping over me with so much intensity I shiver. “I thought you framed by the sunset in my lands

was the most beautiful thing, but this”—he cups my breast and sweeps his thumb across the sensitive peak—“you in the firelight,

under my hands? Stunning.”

Something like bliss blossoms in my stomach, and I think I’m shaking. Not with nerves. With need. With joy. I want to pull

him back to me, to kiss him again, but I don’t. I wait and let him look at me the way I never would’ve imagined wanting anyone

to look at me. Not the real me.

When he finally lowers to me again, I thread my fingers through his hair.

He skates his mouth along my jaw, down my neck, and back up, tongue flicking across my earlobe before he pulls it between his teeth, drawing a gasp from my chest. As if he needs his mouth to explore every inch his eyes just did, he travels down my body and across my chest, teasing my breasts with such skill I can’t focus on anything but how to breathe.

He glides his lips across the softness of my abdomen and curls his fingers into the waistband of my riding pants.

He removes them, following his hands with his mouth. Every part of me gets different treatment. I get the scrape of his teeth

across the swell of my hips, and the barely there skim of lips and warm breath down the sensitive skin of my inner thighs,

a sweep of the bridge of his nose along my shin. When he’s kneeling between my feet, he tosses my pants to the side and pauses

again. Looking.

Now I’m sure I’m trembling, but I’m no longer nervous about what he thinks of my body, not when the truth is so apparent in

his eyes.

He shucks off his own pants before lowering back onto me, and his skin is so warm against mine I can’t believe I ever worried

about the cold. It could be snowing, and I probably wouldn’t notice.

“Too fast?” But he says it like he’s asking permission to breathe.

I shake my head and hold his gaze. There’s nothing between us, and I’ve made myself so vulnerable by letting him look the

way he did, speaking my truth feels simple in comparison. “I’ve wanted you for a long, long time,” I say. “But tonight, it’s

different than wanting.” I search his patient face. “I need you. I need this.”

His kiss is so gentle, his movements so precise.

It isn’t my first time, but I find myself wishing it were.

Not because I think I lost something when I slept with the neighbor boy back home, but because my first time was nothing like this.

The tenderness and the care. I’ve spent far too much of my life believing I was disposable, but in Misha’s arms, as he looks into my eyes and joins his body with mine, I feel nothing but precious.