Page 67

I was hoping I could kiss you.

“Oh,” I whisper, dipping my head. Heat moves through my body like a scalding liquid, fanning against my cheeks. There’s something so exposing about the fact that he can see me, but I can’t see him.

“Just…this once?”

My brows draw together in bemusement. Just once?

“ I know you don’t exactly have many choices, but…it doesn’t seem to make me want to any less.”

“I…” I only said that because I didn’t want him to know about the dāemon and now…now he knows. He knows and he still wants to kiss me. Even after I…but just once …

“Or you can tell me to fuck off if you’d rather.”

“No, I want you to,” I say quickly, licking at my lips. I go very still, body tensing as he wraps a warm hand around my neck, thumb smoothing up my throat. His nose grazes mine, a feather-light touch of his lips. I careen forward slightly to find the air cold and empty.

“But first--" I exhale sharply and he laughs. “I thought we could make another agreement. I have amends I would like to make,” he says voice dropping as his proximity grows closer. “I think the last time wasn’t really worthy of being your first kiss. So, I was hoping we could agree that this one is the real first.”

“What about the one before that?”

His lips graze my ear. “Another man definitely doesn’t get to claim your first kiss, Pandora,” he growls.

That one had completely slipped my mind. “No, I was talking about the one before that,” I correct.

“Did you kiss someone before that?” he questions.

I laugh. “I’m talking about the one before that with you . The one you stole.”

He grunts out a discontented noise, apparently having scrubbed that one from his mind completely. “That one is definitely not worthy.”

“I’m not really sure it works like that,” I murmur.

He turns his head, lips grazing across my temple as his breaths caress my face. “Humor me?”

“Okay,” I clip out only because my heart is thundering in my chest with anticipation. His palm sweeps further up my neck, tilting my jaw up to meet him as I feel him inch closer, ever closer. Shivers sprout across my skin. I feel vulnerable with the lack of sight. Suspicions hackling, I suddenly yank my head back. “Wait—you’re not going to like press a toad to my mouth or something, are you?”

He barks out a laugh. “Do you really think I’d do that?”

“I don’t know. I just feel…like I’m at your mercy because I can’t see.”

He laughs again. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve compared me to a toad. But…I’ve been called worse.”

He fits his lips over me before I can relinquish my grin. His own smile presses against mine, and even though I knew it was coming the breath whooshes from my chest, my heart beating harder, faster. He moves slowly, our mouths parting slightly as we take our first sips.

Not our first. But what should be our first. A kiss both of us desire and have decided on. Knowing he wants this just as much as I do, asked for it this time expands under my ribs.

I reach forward, searching until I find his jaw, admiring its structure under the tips of my fingers, trailing up to do the same with the sides of his skull. The kiss is soft, sweet yet careful. I want to be so much closer. I step forward, momentarily forgetting I’m on the ledge of a step, and start to dip. He catches me with a soft laugh against my mouth, settles me back on the step, and presses firm lips over mine once before he pulls back, nudging first the tip of his nose along mine and then his forehead. “Better?” he murmurs, hands sliding up to cradle my face.

“Mhm.” I do feel better. The dāemon is so faint I can barely feel it at all. All that deep, panging sorrow inside of me lightened.

He lets out a soft chiding laugh. “I meant your eyesight.”

“Oh.” My eyes flash open to find his grin. “Yes,” I say breathlessly. “Better.”

It’s dim in the black-bricked tunnel he’s placed us in and I blink, eyes adjusting to our surroundings. The setting sun behind us lights his eyes in a warm glow. “Were you implying that was better…for a first kiss?”

I look down to where my hand curls around the collar of his shirt. “I actually meant that… I feel better,” I whisper sheepishly.

A splash of surprise, and then a line of tension tightens in his eyes and his brow. It slips away within a few blinks. “Good,” he murmurs. “And the kiss?”

“The kiss…eh,” I say, scrunching my nose and shrugging as I weigh it in comparison to the previous two. “More in line with the first one.”

He barks out a sound—half laugh, half scoff. “In line with the kiss where you were covered in blood?” he balks. “It must’ve been really horrible.”

“I didn’t say that.”

His brows shoot up.

“Just that I think you could’ve done it better.”

He slicks his tongue over the front of his teeth, amused and seemingly pleased to take my bait. He moves up a step, positioning his body closer and tilting his head down with a challenging look. “I think that's not good enough then.”

Another wave of sweltering, frothy heat sweeps over me and I hide it under another casual shrug of my shoulder. “If you were trying to surpass your previous attempts…”

One hand fists over the collar of my dress, tugging me up to the tips of my toes as his other hand tilts my face up to meet him. “This one is the real first,” he insists.

There’s nothing soft or gentle this time. He kisses me with a fervor. A delicious thrill runs through me, sprouting over the top of my scalp and prickling down to the tips of my toes. The greeting of our bodies converge with the spirit of a fleeting breeze that rapidly escalates into a howling, whistling wind. I lace my arms around his neck, leaning into him as he sucks my bottom lip between his, teasing his teeth over the delicate skin. A soft, involuntary moan creeps up my throat followed by a vibrant flush of warmth because it's revealed something I wasn’t quite intending to convey—the extent of my enthusiasm.

But then he gives a sound in return—low, rough, devastatingly honest . His chin tilting up, lips nudging, beckoning me deeper into the embrace of his kiss. I follow, sinking into him and any facade of indifference burns up between the heat of our bodies, the frantic touches of our lips.

By the time he breaks us apart we’re both panting. “Better?” he asks breathlessly. His eyes are questioning, the flurried frenzy I feel pounding in my own blood carefully contained to his dilated pupils.

I hesitate, no longer sure what the right answer to the question is. What it is he wants me to say. Voicing anything at all feels like walking out onto a hazardous decaying bridge. “Close,” I clip out.

I’m still not sure if I’ve said the right thing when he laughs, head sagging down to rest against my shoulder in resignation. He releases a low groan into the hollow of my neck and then he takes another step up, pressing our bodies flush as his hands slope down, molding around my waist, my abdomen. Uncertain at first and then with more pressure, pulling soft sighs from my lips as they curl around the curve of my ass. My breath catches, lips parting as he seizes my upper legs and tugs me up against him—against all of him, the thick, hard length wedged between my thighs. I obediently curl my legs around his waist, hands tangling in the hair at the back of his head. “This one is the real first then,” he rumbles.

His lips meld over me, not leaving mine as he walks me over to the bricked wall to hold me up against it with his hands and his magic. I lose myself there in the madness, crazed by his heat, his scent, the warm taste of his skin as he kisses and licks and nips at my lips and then my neck. He more than kisses me, his hands moving feverishly, brushing first over my neck and my shoulders, and then further down, over my waist, cupping my ass and sliding back up to tease my breasts over my dress. Groping and pressing into me as if he’d love nothing more to meld himself to me completely but we’re left desperately pawing at the border. Touching every place except for the one I want him most.

He rips away suddenly, one hand pressing my head back to the wall like he doesn’t trust me, doesn’t trust himself to stop. “I think that’s…sufficient,” he gruffs.

I almost pull him back to me right then and there but then painful memories sprout. Reminders of how that ended for me the last time and I stiffen, so terrified of doing the wrong thing again…I just grip his arms and lean my head back against the wall, letting my eyelids drift shut as I breathe and allow myself to enjoy this moment of being close to him.

“Pandora?” he murmurs distractedly as his fingers stroke over my cheek.

My eyelids flutter open to find him. The light has grown so dim I can barely make out his features. “Was it better…for a first kiss?”

“Better,” I agree.

He presses his face into my neck and groans out a sound that’s both contented and simultaneously despairing. “I want to give you better, Pandora,” he says, lips finding my ear. “I want to give you a better everything. A better life.” His fingers curl intently around the back of my neck. “One where you’re not locked inside all the time. Where you don’t have to be my punishment. Where you don’t have to hide that you’re a Magi. Where you get to live…and to choose how you want to live and who with. I’m going to give that to you,” he pledges. “I swear I will.”

I push back at his shoulder so I can look at him, searching his face in the darkness. “You mean…leave this place?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

“Where would we go?”

He looses a long sigh. “Just give me time to figure everything out. I…I have to get Imen back.”

“No—of course. You should,” I say nodding as my hand drifts across his shoulder. “You think you will?”

“I will,” he assures me. He mirrors me, peeling at my dress between his fingers. “But I need you to get better too, pet. I need you to have at least some basic control over your magic. A little bit of a defense.”

My chest sinks. “Sitri…that’s not working.”

“Not like that,” he says hastily. “A different way,” he murmurs, staring off as he chews at his lip. He turns back, smoothing at my hair and pressing a final kiss to my forehead. “A different way,” he assures me as he sets me back on the ground.

I’m lost in a clouded daze as we make our way back to his chambers. Nothing can bring me down from it. Not even when he drops my hand as we depart from the garden or wishes me a quick goodnight without looking at me and disappears into his bedroom. It’s only then, as I sink to the couch I realize I can’t feel the dāemon at all. Not even the slightest thump through my body, like it’s sated deep down inside of me.

I drop my head to my pillow as I imagine what it would be like to have a life, a real life, where I get to choose. I stare at his bedroom door.

Maybe I could even choose him.