Page 125 of Obsidian and Frost

He swallowed hard.

“Sylas?” I pushed, albeit without an edge this time.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I was.” He shifted his weight on his chair. “And in light of last night, I still am.” He gestured at me holding Velra. “Especially with this… development.”

With some rather impressive graceful moves—if I did say so myself—I managed to extricate myself from Velra without jostling her even a little.

Then I walked to Sylas.

Before I made it to him, he snapped his fingers, and I looked down to find myself clad in his bathrobe.

My lips quirked.

He couldn’t handle me naked in front of him. I liked that a whole lot.

But as he’d just made clear, I had a much deeper effect on him than merely physical titillation and satisfaction—mind-blowing satisfaction, but still.

He stared steadily at me, but I knew him well enough to see some wariness there. He wasn’t sure what I was gonna do—or say. And it had him worried.

Shit,he really cared so much about where this was gonna go.

I slapped my hands down on the arms of his chair and eyed him. “As I’ve repeatedly told Velra—and she finally accepted it last night—I’m absolutely not easily freaked out, necromancer.”

“That sounds mighty powerful in theory.”

“Look, you’ve been there for me during some of my worst moments lately. Of course I’m going to do the same for you. And, no, not out of duty, but because I want to. Because I care about you. Because I pulled you into my fucking life and I don’t do that unless I intend to keep somebody there, all right? I’m a possessive asshole, Sylas. I thought I’d made that clear several times over.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “You have. But—”

“But nothing. I’m not leaving you, not turning tail—pun intended—just because you’re sick. But you’ve gotta let me in, let us in. Velra might be able to help you. I can help you with your vigilante work so you don’t get into that awful state of depletion and fucking desiccation that you did last night. You want me with you, enough where you’ve actually admitted you’re afraid to lose me, then you start fucking acting like it. You let me help you. Let Velra help you. You can’t have it both ways. You want this closeness, you’ve gotta let us in. No more closed-off bullshit.”

He remained silent for a moment, taking my words in, and clearly feeling the weight of them.

And then he finally spoke, “Your terms are acceptable.”

Fucking son of a—my terms are—fine.I’d take it. Let him believe he still held the dominant stance in this situation. He’d already put a lot out there, basically stripped himself bare, and I knew he didn’t like that. And, yeah, I also knew really well how that felt.

“Good,” I grunted, pushing off the chair.

He retrieved his tea and took a sip, then gestured at Velra. “Want to explain howthattranspired last night?”

“Neither of us wanted to leave you alone through the night so we came back here. She breached your ward to get back in and we slept here. It was actually her suggestion to sleep in your bed, but we decided it would be best not to wake you.”

He raised his eyebrow at that last part.

“Probably something to do with you two kissing.”

“She told you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

It was good, yes. It put us all on the same page. And I liked that she’d gone there with him. It made things easier, and it pulled us closer as a unit, rather than pieces growing close separately, something when she’d told me about the kiss had me realizing just how much I’d wanted that.

Judging by the look in his eyes he was right there with me on that.

Damn,it was strange how things could actually work out sometimes.