Page 29

Thea

A n hour later, every inch of my body was clean and silky smooth, my appetite was wonderfully satiated, and I was five chapters into Lord Verlion— and elated to discover that three of those chapters were absolute filth.

Murders, poisonings, and attempted usurpations were forgotten, and life simply slipped back into its usual rhythms, for that was what life did best. It regained its shape. Even after loss. Even after tragedy.

As I flicked purple bubbles with my fingertips, I thought how I’d always been happiest like this, in my solitude, basking in stories and daydreams that sometimes felt like secret prayers. It was partly why I loved being with Hector. He always respected my need for inwardness after a day of adventure, and oftentimes we would spend our nights doing nothing at all but simply existing near each other. In a way, I was more myself when I was with him than when I was alone.

I set my book aside and sank deeper into the tub, thinking of him lounging in his own enchanted bath in the next room. I imagined the morning light streaming through the small window and painting his strong neck gold. Then the slope of his back and the narrow curve of his hipbones, drawing downward. I wanted to shut my eyes, imagine the rest. The heat of his skin. The parting of his lips. I knew exactly how pleasure would look on him. Everything else would be a mystery, something to tremble about, but this image I could hold in the frame of my mind just so.

But then my eyes strayed toward the ornate clock atop the mantel, discovering that more than an hour had passed already.

Grudgingly, I pulled myself out of the water, patted my body dry with a towel, and slipped into a fresh nightdress—courtesy of the Castle—before settling down at the dressing table to run oil through my curls.

I was nearly done when Hector’s deep rasp startled me out of my little ritual. “You forgot to knock.”

I jumped on my seat, a hand pressed upon my thundering chest. “For the love of the stars, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

He was leaning against the doorframe, wearing nothing but a towel around his hips. His damp hair fell messily over his eyes, and his skin glistened with water, light-dazzled droplets clinging to the crescents of his arms, the sculpted lines of his abdomen, the narrowing muscle that disappeared beneath the white cloth. His body was all solid strength like that, but his face was the exact opposite—tenderness and melting heat.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said. The mere sound of his voice, low and rough with tension, was enough to fill my body with expectation.

“Like what?”

“You know like what.”

“I can’t,” I whispered, knowing well what these words would do to him. “I don’t want to.”

A moment passed, nervous and electric.

Hector straightened, and the muscles of his arms curved, moons waxing and waning as he moved. His eyes on mine were golden stars and bonfire smoke. “Tell me to turn around.”

Another white-hot rush of anticipation. “No.”

“Tell me to lock the door behind me,” he pressed, his expression growing hopeless, desperate.

“No,” I repeated, steadier now.

He took a step, a single step, toward me. “Tell me no.”

This time I didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.

Then I blinked, and Hector appeared right before me, lifting me from the chair with an arm around my waist. He put me down on my bare feet and stared into my eyes until I learned what it was to be seen. Seen past my flesh and bones. Seen for the heart in my chest, the passion of my soul.

He cupped my face, and the room fell away. There was only him. Time stopped spending seconds. The only spent things in the world were our breaths.

“Then tell me yes,” he said. “Tell me you want this. If I have you, I will have you all. Everything you are, everything you will be. Every inch of your body. Every thought that slips your mind. Every ounce of love you have to give. And if you can’t tell me that, then tell me to wait. I’d rather wait an eternity to have you all than to have only a piece of you now.” His forehead dropped on mine, his fingers painting soft lines along the sides of my face. “It will kill me if you regret this.”

I knew it would. I knew what this would mean to him. This was exactly why I wanted it. I’d spent my whole life thinking I’d have to find myself before committing to someone else, and although this was true to a certain level, I was also starting to understand that this journey of self-discovery was going to be a continuous one. We weren’t projects with a beginning and an end but an ever-growing collection of memories. Life changed, and we changed with it, and I couldn’t think of another person I wanted to spend a life changing with more than Hector. There had only ever been Hector.

I drew back a little, just enough to be able to look into his eyes. “I will never regret you. Following you to the Castle that day was the best decision I’ve ever made. You can tell me the most horrible things, you can turn me away right now, and every night I will still wish the stars are shining brighter where you are. You are my everything. I will never, ever regret you.”

Breathless, he took my hand and placed it upon his bare chest, right over the frantic drumming of his heart. “Do you feel this? It’s so devoted to you I can barely call it my own anymore.”

My limbs started feeling heavy, aching to be touched by him. “Kiss me,” I breathed.

With the force of the wind itself, Hector pressed me against the wall, curling his fingers into the neckline of my nightdress and making me painfully aware of my lack of undergarments beneath. Then he leaned in, his thigh tangling between my own, the flame of his mouth crackling right before mine. And just as I readied myself for the kiss, he pulled back and made me chase it.

“Kiss you where? Here?” he drawled, unlacing my neckline, ribbon by ribbon, until he was able to lower his mouth to my bare breastbone. His breath warmed my skin, his lips parting to learn the taste of me. Slowly, as though he wanted to prolong the sensation, his hands slipped inside the unfurled fabric and pressed right under the curve of my breasts. I had to bite down on my lip to suppress a moan. I will die if you don’t kiss me now , I almost said. Instead I closed my eyes and savored the miracle of his hands on my body.

“Or maybe here?” he suggested, his mouth kissing a slow, wet path up my collarbone, stirring desires in me I hadn’t known myself capable of craving. Things I’d read in books. Things I’d asked the stars for.

A low grunt escaped him when he reached the base of my throat. The rough sound reverberated through me, melting into an ache between my thighs.

“Here, perhaps,” he murmured against my flushed skin. His fingers were still pressing on that spot under my breasts; only now, they were bolder, his thumbs tracing circles over them.

The nightdress slipped from my shoulders, gathering around my waist. I arched into his touch, surrendering myself to him with a needful sigh. I could feel him everywhere. Even in the places he had not touched yet.

Then his eyes wafted up and met mine. “Where, Dorothea?”

I licked my lips, and just as I began to utter the words, he threaded his fingers through my hair, bent my head back across his palm, and kissed me.

He kissed me, and it was like lightning striking the ground. Harsh, brilliant, uncanny—a surging tide of warmth that made my soul yield. He kissed me with all of his body, all of his strength, with the intensity of a million stars, making up for all the years our lips hadn’t been kissing.

I could not think; I could not do anything but take him in, each breath, each silent moan, the unhesitant movements of his lips on mine. My mouth opened for him like a dayflower in the sun, my arms coming up to close around his neck, my bare breasts pressing against the firmness of his chest, my hips softening, falling into alignment with his. I had never felt more right in my life. That was the only word in my mind as I felt his tongue flicking, tasting, discovering my mouth for the very first time. Right. Everything was right again. The Castle was alive. Our fates were as well-entangled as our limbs. The destiny of stars was no longer to collapse.

Needing to see his expression, I cracked my eyes open.

He was already watching me. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re shaking.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I don’t mean to.”

“We can stop if this is too strange for you. I don’t want you to feel pressured because of what I said—”

“It is strange. But not in the way you think.” I touched my fingers to the swollen curve of his mouth, mesmerized. “I’ve known your lips for so long. Now they’re new to me.”

“Kiss me again then,” he said. “Kiss me until there is no part of me unknown by you.”

I gave his top lip a gentle lick before passing my tongue over the length of his fangs. I felt them graze against the corner of my mouth and shivered.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

Even the tips of my ears were burning. “More than I should.”

He cupped the side of my face, his thumb at my jawbone, and tilted back my head so he could drag his fangs along my exposed throat. “And this?”

“I think I like everything you do.”

His mouth moved over mine again, his tongue easing between my lips. The kiss deepened. His hands roamed lower on my body, trailing past the slope of my waist to squeeze the curve of my backside. He nudged my pelvis forward so I could feel his hardness underneath the towel. A terrible emptiness pulsed between my thighs. My limbs turned to honey, summer-hot and pliable. Our gazes locked, and the way he looked now, dark and untethered, I knew I looked the same.

“Stop?” he panted, the rise and fall of his chest quickening against mine.

I shook my head in a fury, twisting my fingers into his damp hair. I guided his face back to mine, recapturing his lips in yet another sloppy kiss, all while he coaxed my dress down my thighs until it was a pool of cotton at our feet.

My hands slipped lower on his body, eager to trace the refined path from his chest to his abdomen. With a little tug, I freed him from the towel, and the bare pressure of his erection against my stomach undid me.

I had to have him. Now. Forever. Forevermore.

“Bed,” I sighed, pressing a hundred maddened kisses along the column of his throat. He moaned, his head falling back, giving me better access, his hands on my waist as firm as I was shaking. I was riddled with nervousness. I did not know what he’d like. I knew so many things about him, but now we were strangers. And I wanted to learn. I wanted to know his rhythm, see his breath catch, feel the release of his yearning on the pad of my palm, the inside of my thighs.

“No,” he groaned at the ceiling.

I stopped breathing. “No?”

“I will not make love to you in a house full of enemies,” he said.

I slid a hand over his hard length and squeezed. His eyes rolled back. For a perfect, petal-soft second, I thought he died. “But I need you,” I whispered.

The words were like a spell. He had no choice but to yield.

“I’ll give you all you need,” he rasped, his knee parting my own. His hand glided down my abdomen and slipped between my thighs. I almost found release just from the slight pressure of his thumb, the slow drag of his fingertips along my wetness.

My face caved into the crook of his neck, but he cupped my throat and nudged me back against the wall. “Don’t hide your face. Let me see you.”

And so we watched each other come undone, my hips rocking to the rhythm of his fingers. They were relentless, and I was restless. Like iron on fire, I was melted down and desperate for more. I thought of nothing else. Just more .

I must have said it aloud. “The rest will have to wait,” he hummed in my ear.

“I’ll be quiet,” I whispered, my fingers tracing the chiseled line of his hip.

Before I could close my fingers around him, he seized both of my wrists in one hand and pinned them on the wall above my head. “If I take you now, you won’t be able to keep quiet.” As if to prove it, he let a single finger inside me, wringing an outcry of pleasure from my lips. “I won’t be able to keep quiet either,” he admitted, the pressure of his hand increasing, following my quickening gasps. “When we do this, we’ll be alone and have hours, days, nights ahead of us.”

I lost my mind after that. His thrusts grew harder, turning me into a mess of inarticulate murmurs. I almost begged him to take me then, for tomorrow had never been very kind to us.

“Promise me nothing will ruin this,” I sighed, so close to release that the words were more sound than letters strung together. “Promise me, and I’ll believe you.”

“I promise,” he chanted between kisses. “I promise.”

The ache between my thighs expanded up to my abdomen, tightening and coiling and gathering. His other hand came around my jaw, keeping my head straight and my eyes on him as this lightning-striking-the-ground sense stole over my body once more. I pulsed around his fingers, my release quiet and unhurried, blissful as my empty head.

I was left boneless, light as air.

Hector’s face softened too, despite his hardness, which was pressing up against my bare stomach, heavy with unspent need. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his fingers still tracing circles between my thighs. “Sometimes it hurts looking at you. Like my heart will burst if I don’t look away.”

“Don’t look away,” was all I said.

He obeyed. His eyes never left mine as he sank to his knees before me, gripped my left leg, and threw it over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” I gasped. “I just had—”

“I need to taste it.”

Blood rushed to my face. “Is that something vampires do?”

“It’s something you and I do.”

Then he buried his face between my thighs and showed me what it was to be hungry.

Waves of inexpressible pleasure flooded me at every lick, every trace, every swirl of his tongue along the center of me. Gazing down at his flushed cheekbones, I took the silky strands of his hair between my fingers and kept him on the exact spot I needed him.

He had never looked more beautiful. The gods, I thought, had made his face for this exact purpose. To be used like this by me. To yield to the ocean of my pleasure. To be pulled under. To drown. Until his only conscious thought was of my taste on his tongue. His only lifeline. I knew he would agree if I told him this, for he did not come up for air. He did not pause to ask me how I liked it. He just had me.

One ripple of release rolled into another, and I soared once more, chanting his name with my fingers still tangled in his soft hair.

Before I was able to fully return to myself, leaning slack and dreamy against the wall, Hector pulled away, his intoxicated expression shifting to a frustrated scowl. “Someone’s at the door,” he bristled and then vanished, moving so fast around the room that I could only see the blurry outline of his figure darting from one corner to another.

I felt a tug around my waist and found myself standing in my nightdress while Hector lingered by the door, fully clad, his hand on the doorknob.

Sorry , he mouthed.

I smiled like a drunken idiot. I was too happy. Too stupidly, ineffably happy to even wonder who could be awake at this sun-dazed hour.