Page 67 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

His breath hitched, his fists curling like he was trying to hold himself together by will alone.

“I was afraid of how much I wanted you. How much I needed you. I was afraid that if I let myself have you, I wouldn’t know how to keep you.

I had so little to begin with, and if I lost you”—he swallowed hard, shaking his head—“there’d be nothing left of me. ”

His hands trembled at his sides. In fact, his entire body was shaking.

“And that’s why I couldn’t say it. When we said goodbye, the first time.

I used to be afraid of what you made me feel.

Of the way you looked at me like I was someone worth saving, worth—fuck, worth loving—when they told me my whole life I wasn’t. ”

I opened my mouth.

“But I’m not afraid anymore.”

Our eyes locked. The tips of his fingers entwined with the tips of mine, desperate but certain. “I love you, Lou. I love you, and nobody ever taught me how to do it, but if you let me, I swear to fucking God I will try.”

“Shai.”

“Yeah?” he said, answering to his name immediately as if he were desperate to let me take over.

“Come here.” I swept his snow-dusted lock of golden hair, cupping his face as he lowered his lashes and leaned forward into my touch with the most exhausted sigh I’d ever heard. His cheek was frigid on the surface but warm beneath, and the warmth transferred to my fingertips as I held them there.

“I can’t speak for the world, but I can speak for me.”

He raised his eyes.

“And I know there isn’t any version of you, in any lifetime, in any universe, that I would ever not like. That I would ever not want. That I would ever not love.”

His sigh of relief seemed to shake him to his core. “I was really hoping you would say that,” he confessed. “And I know I have some catching up to do, so I promise you’ll be hearing I love you again, every day, for the rest of my life. And if I miss a day, which I won’t, call me out on it, yeah?”

“Oh, I will.” I pressed myself against him again, winding my arms around his waist under his coat, poking his hip with mine.

And like that, we kept walking farther into the silent park, crunching leaves, kicking snow, toward a wall of elms and along a row of maples with not a single crimson leaf left to fall.

But his eyes were fixed on something even farther away.

Across the icy river, beyond the iron-gray bay, over an ocean.

“And—since you asked, there’s one more thing.

I have to go back,” he said, turning to me suddenly.

“With Maeve. To where the Alzette meets the Petrusse. That’s where—well. To put a marker up.”

Slowly, he raised our clasped hands, scientifically examining the way our fingers interlocked, before earnestly meeting my eyes. “Will you come with us? This summer,” he said, adding, “Luxembourg will be beautiful then.”

As if he thought he had to sell me on it. On seeing his homeland. His real homeland, where he’d been abused as cruelly as he had been everywhere else, but that he loved all the same.

“I’d go anywhere with you, Shai. You know that.” I kissed that intricate, interlocking bed of scars—a kiss that revealed, to my surprise, his initials etched in stacked script on the gold signet ring: S-v-S.

“I bought one for Maeve, too,” he explained. “She traced the genealogy. Van Someren was our family name, from generations ago. Before the hard times.”

“‘Van?’”

“They say it signifies nobility.” The trace of a smile, keen for my reaction.

“ Nobility ? Malin was right? You are a prince?” I bounced a little on his arm.

“No,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Although my third great-grandfather was a grand duke, apparently. But don’t get too excited. I didn’t inherit anything. We looked into it, believe me.”

“Great-grandson of a grand duke,” I repeated. “Okay. Well, not every girl can say that about her boyfriend. Or that she named him,” I added slyly.

“All right, young lady, let’s clear one thing up right now: it was a suggestion ,” he said as I laughed mischievously. “Which I chose to accept. Probably because it just sounded so damn sexy on your lips.”

“Sexy?! You were dying !”

“Yeah, I know. A guy can’t die happy? And where’d you come up with it, anyway? Do you speak Hebrew?”

“Not a word, but my grandmother did. And it means ‘gift.’ Which you are.”

“Gift?” He arched an eyebrow. “I think you mean ‘gifted.’”

“I mean both. Now kiss me, Shai. Oh, shit, wow, that does sound sexy.”

“Told you,” he said, obliging me immediately in a pattern I remembered—forehead, eyelids, both cheeks, nose, and lips. “Let’s do some more testing. Say ‘touch me, Shai.’”

“Touch me, Shai.”

His hands were there in an instant, up my open coat and under Rebekah’s stolen sweater and the thin camisole beneath, his rough, scarred thumbs stroking the skin just above my waistband, under my navel, and above that mound of flesh and nerve as he lifted me effortlessly by the hips, pressing my body flush against his.

Polar November closed in on all sides, but I only had him —his power, his warmth, his solidity, his realness—no longer the ghost of a touch forbidden, the dream of a life beyond reach.

Shai’s mouth found mine again, his kiss bold, urgent, demanding, commanding .

Huge and open, ravenous as an inferno, claiming, consuming, immolating every bare, icy patch on my ears and collarbone and neck, right down to my décolletage.

And oh yes, I yielded for him, molded myself in his shape, one leg up around his waist and wrapping the other, cattishly arching and fisting the lapels of his lush coat until we broke and just breathed heat for a few seconds in dewy, exquisite synergy, brows pressed together.

And then I thought he would stop, but he just kept kissing , kissing while the flakes fell silently down on our hair and shoulders and eyelashes, kissing while our hearts lashed against our shivering chests, kissing until he cradled his head on my shoulder, gasping for air, kissing until he lowered his glistening lashes and just inhaled , drank me in, fuller and fuller, more and more, as if I, Louisa Wainwright-Phillips, were sweeter than liberty, indeed the sweetest nectar this boy, this free man, had ever tasted.

So what if he would always scan a room before entering to see what he could get away with? Or that he might always be polite to strangers and keep things close to the vest? Or that he might always have the knack of looking at people without really looking?

It all had its uses.

Now he let my boots tumble and crunch lightly on the snow. He stood there, broad shoulders heaving from what I’d done to him. But we weren’t done. He grinned. “Now say, f?—”

I swatted him. “We’re in public .”

“Oh, that’s right, my mistake.” He lifted his gaze, expression softening slightly as if just now seeing he was in this park in all its antique solitude, the snow falling more swiftly now, diagonally blanketing the oaks and planes, sentinel trees planted in the early days of the last century for the dream of freedom that had not died here, just slept a while.

Then he remembered why . “We should probably do something about that, yeah?” He paused.

“Not that you’ll ever hear me complain about kissing you in public. ”

“You know what? I think you knew you would be, someday.”

“I hoped ,” he replied, laughing. “I didn’t know.” He paused. “Okay, yeah, maybe I did know.”

And now we were both laughing.

“Let’s stay here,” I proclaimed. “We’re not doing anything we have to hide. Well.” Now in his ear, my whisper. Soft. Hot. Cunning. Bold. A promise kept, a promise coming. “Not yet.”