“No,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
“I have to go drink moonale.” I pulled my hand away and cowered backward into his bed, ignoring every cell in my body hissing at me to hold on to him.
As he strolled toward a tall wooden cabinet on the opposite end of his room, he said, “I’ll get you moonale. You need to stay until I’m done making your new magic suppressants.”
I was dizzy, mesmerized by his sculpted arms as he removed two bottles of moonale from a fully stocked bar cabinet. When he returned and pressed a cold bottle in my hand, the brush of our fingers elicited a pleasurable shudder from me. He gave me a questioning look, letting me know he hadn’t intended it. My body a shaking mess of emotions, I sank to the ground andfolded in my legs.
“I’ll take your moonale,” I said, turning the cool bottle in my hand. “But I don’t want new magic suppressants. We tried cuffs. I burned through them.” I took a sip of moonale and studied the floor.
After a few swallows, I realized drinking was making my muscles loosen in a way they usually didn’t when I was in magic withdrawal. Remembering how my discomfort had eased for a while after the last time I blinked dangerously close to the ether, I slowed down with smaller sips, taking bigger breaks between them.
I already wanted Leland more than I could explain, and getting drunk in his room, this close to his bed, wasn’t going to help me ignore the impulse to satisfy my need for him.
Leland stood over me, with one hand holding the bottle of moonale he was drinking while his other drilled into his mattress. His eyes were obstinate, and I knew what it meant. It didn’t matter what I wanted. He was making the cuffs.
I took another small sip, then pressed the bottom of the chilled bottle to my collarbone, relishing the feel of cold glass on my warm skin.
When I looked up, Leland was staring at a fixed point on the pale-red wall behind me, the same avoidant stare he’d had the time I’d put on Ash’s tube top, and the time he’d been assaulted by an orgy of lingerie on my bed.
I suddenly remembered how thin my white tank top was, how, after sweating through the night, the thought of strapping into a bra was unbearable. Now, cotton stretched tight across the ache in my breasts, and the cold moonale bottle — so seductively cool to my touch — was not helping. I needed relief, friction.
“Leland?”
His gaze slid down, his chest moving almost as hard as mine was. “Yes?”
One of my straps slipped off my shoulder, and I left it. I would have let it be more; I would have let him —
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“Ember. Please get up.”
I allowed him to pull me to my feet, leaving the half-drunk bottle of moonale behind on his floor.
Cupping my jaw and brushing his thumb along my cheek, he said, “Please don’t look at me like that. I don’t know what to do with it.”
My cheeks burned with heat, and warm tingles licked up the back of my thighs as his thumb traveled down to my chin. Unable to help it, I kept looking at him exactly as I had been, like I wanted him to see all of me, like I could look at him like this forever.
“Why?” I swallowed. If we stood just one inch closer, with a deep enough breath, my chest could brush against his. “It won’t seal the bond, will it?Thisisn’t your deepest need.”
He gently grasped my chin and tipped my jaw back, then lowered his eyes to my chest. “It could be.”
He maintained his gaze on my neckline as his hand trailed lower, his fingertips skimming down my neck, then to the base of my throat — where he paused. I let my eyes close, and his exploratory hand trailed down my arm and gradually stopped. He pulled away slowly, then walked across the room and planted his hands on his desk.
I fixed my top, staring at his back, mentally tracing the hard lines beneath his white shirt. Unsteady, I had to lean back on his bed for support, my fingers lacing into the soft folds of his cool bedspread.
“We can’t,” he said, and I heard him trying to convince himself. “We can’t. We can’t.”
“Because of the bond, or because — ”
“Because I could have your back hit that bed in two seconds, Ember,” he said, jerking his head to the bed across from him. “Or I can wait and see if you’re still interested, after you get to know me.”
“I feel like I do know you . . .”
“You don’t.” He angled his head downward, like he was looking at his legs. “If you did, you wouldn’t have looked at me that way.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. “I can’t help it. It’s thisstupidCounterpart bond.”
