Page 86 of Blood and Moonlight

CHAPTER 34

I’m not prepared for how it feels to kiss Simon in the moonlight.

The whole time we talked, I’d focused on his voice and his face, occasionally distracted by the scent of his clothes or skin or the silver light on his hair and eyelashes as he moved. Whenever I’d touched him, the shock of that sense was quickly lost in the conversation. On some level, I believed I’d gotten used to all of it.

That assumption shatters the instant our lips touch. Small as it is, the contact blossoms in my mind like the reddest rose. His mouth yields in surprise, then immediately seeks to meet mine, filling the gaps between us with soft yearning.

Until Simon eases away.

He doesn’t go far, though, holding himself near enough that I can feel his breath curling through the air with warm tendrils. “And what if I drag you Beyond the Moon and to the Gates of Hell itself?”

“Then we’ll find our way back.” Painful as it is to resist, I know I can’t kiss him again. If this is going to continue—and in this moment I would give up all my magick to make it do so—ithas to be his choice. “Simon, for once in your life, consider that you might be worth saving.”

One hand comes up to my cheek, and I feel his pulse—quick and erratic—through his fingertips and then his palm. “Is that what you believe?”

“I do.” I skim my own fingers up Simon’s arm to the tendons at his wrist and settle them between the ridges of his knuckles. “But it only matters if you believe it, too.”

He shivers and tenses, bringing me a fraction of an inch closer. “I think I’d believe the Sun was the moon if you said so.” Simon leans in, his nose grazing mine. “Thank the Light you’re too honest to take advantage of my trust.”

I think he was trying to make me smile, but his words slice through me so deeply that I flinch right as he moves to close the gap between us again.

Simon freezes. “I thought you wanted… I’m sorry—”

My hand on his shirt keeps him from moving away again. “No,” I say, shoving my guilt aside and following the heat of his breath back to his lips. “It’s exactly right.”

And it is.

It’s the soft molding of his mouth to mine, the sharp tickle of short whiskers on my upper lip. It’s Simon’s other arm slipping around my waist to pull me against his chest until his heartbeat echoes through me like a Sanctum bell. It’s his shuddering inhalation between kisses that never quite end as the next begins.

It’s warmth and color and light flowing through my veins to every inch of me, inside and out.

I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until a different dizziness forces me to stop. Gasping, I open my eyes to see the half-moon staring at me through the narrow stone columns, so bright I immediately squint.

“Is something wrong?” Simon asks, and I can tell he desperately doesn’t want it to be him.

“The moon,” I mumble without thinking, the fresh air in my lungs slowly unfogging my mind.

Simon gently pulls me into the shadows cast by the railing, cutting off the cascade of sensations. He lowers me down to the stone beneath us, which is warm from the heat of his body, and holds himself just out of reach. “Better?”

Strangely, it is. Now there’s nothing to distract me from the places we press against each other or the wonder and concern in his eyes as he looks down on me. Out of moonlight, the harsh lines of his face are reduced from those like a stained glass window portrait to a painting so achingly lovely I want to touch it. I raise my hand to his cheek and trace the softened contours with my fingertips, making him blink so slowly I think he’s closed his eyes. When he reopens them, I smile.

“It’s perfect,” I whisper, and pull him back down to me.

An hour. A week. A month.

I have no idea how long we stay up there. The night is cold enough to see the mist of our breath, and the stone floor hard and unyielding, yet I feel nothing but warmth and softness. My body fits perfectly against Simon’s as his lips move as gently as feathers up my jawline to my ears and down my neck and back to my mouth.

“The first time I saw you,” he whispers. “Reallysaw you, was the day I came to the workshop to apologize. I think I stared at you for ten minutes.”

“Is that so?”

He nudges the hollow at the base of my throat with his nose.“You were so lovely, so peaceful, so at one with what you were doing I could have watched you all day.” Simon shakes his head, making his curls brush across my nose. They smell of cedar from the headboard of his bed, a thought that would warm my cheeks if I wasn’t already flushed. “I envied what you had—a skill and a place in life. A purpose.”

Simon raises up to look at me again. “That was the first time I yearned for something more than what I’d settled for. I wanted to be a part of the world you lived in.”

That world is much more complicated than he realizes, but there’s no need to explain that right now, and I’m not certain I could if I wanted to.

Though…