The bond pulled tight, wanting and needy.
Brand swallowed. “No,” he answered, almost immediately regretting it. “I would bloody fucking love to watchyoudo it, though.”
Luna searched his face for a moment and seemed to come to a decision. “I have a secret,” she said softly, “but it may be a solution, too.”
He studied her profile as she watched the writhing crowd. “Go on.”
“Would you dance if no one could see you? If you could look to all the world like you were sitting right here?”
Any other time, any other day, he might have jumped at the chance to move so freely without another thought. But she was stunning and he was hard as a fucking rock. Dizzy with wanting her.
“Explain.”
“Do you remember the first supper we took together, after I healed Baldrir?” She was nervous, spinning a curl in her fingers, and his breaths shallowed to match hers. “Well…”
She went on to describe her mastery over a power that would’ve turned his entire childhood into a fantasy playground. That she could leave an impression of herself and move around freely, unseen.
Burning Solyrian. She was utterly endearing the way she chewed her lip, not quite able to look at him when she was done.
His hand trailed up her bare leg, teasing the inside of her thigh. “You could really leave our images doing anything?”
A shuddering breath left her. “Anything.”
“Then I think we can do better than sitting.” Drumming music chose that moment to start up, its sultry beat calling to him and fraying his nerves in turns. “No one would know?”
“I swear it.”
Heart beating almost painfully, he gripped her nape. “Do it,” he rasped, and kissed her.
Power twined around them, swelling, sweeping over him in a gentle wave. Weeping Sisters, it had been too long. Fleeting pecks to her pale brow had hardly satisfied his desire for her. He neededthis—her tongue and teeth. Her wandering hands.
Tugging on her hair, he broke away to lick a line up her sternum, over the markings she had yet to see. “Fuck, I missed you.” He nipped her throat, her ear, drowning in her moans. “Need you.”
She spread her thighs, and he delved beneath the highest hem of her dress, dipping in to run his fingers through her dripping arousal as he deepened their kiss.
He groaned when she pulled back slightly, her voice a ragged whisper when she said, “Don’t be alarmed.” Her head tipped back when he circled her. “It can be strange to view yourself apart from, well, yourself.”
Eyes on hers, Brand brought his fingers to his mouth and licked every drop of her away—an excellent distraction for his disoriented mind, which had become convinced that shadowed pieces of his body were being gently stripped away as he moved.
“Shitting stars,” she husked, her back arching. “We’re supposed to be dancing.”
“Get on with it then, little moon, so I can finally take you to bed. Show me this trick of yours.”
Though he felt no sensation when he took those first few steps, he still shuddered, not sure if he was ready to see himselfremovedlike that. He wanted to please her, though, in any and every way.
“We look perfect.”
Brand followed her look and sucked in a breath. Tangled together in the most innocent beginnings of their kiss, their likenesses were bathed in firelight, sighing as tongues darted out to taste and tease, his large frame cradling her.
“Fucking stars, you’re beautiful.”
“So are you.” She tugged on the vee in his tunic. “Now, dance with me.”
Every steponto the dance floor chipped away at Brand’s arousal, a practice in torture.
His muscles went rigid, breaths catching in his lungs. He soaked up as much of Luna’s brimming confidence as he could, but he still felt like an utter fool.
She led him straight into the heart of it, to the one battlefield he had yet to conquer, and all the while he dreaded their rowdy greetings as he moved. For heads to nod and mouths to seek conversation.
