“Then perhaps it is a problem best left for tomorrow,” Ayla suggested, her voice sounding nearly as strained as his own. “No sense in mourning an end before it has reached us.”
“Yes.”
Another long moment of silence, in which he tried desperately not to stare at her.
“Would you share a blanket with me? My back is cold,” Ayla said.
He opened his mouth to tell her that she didn’t have to share, she was welcome to have a blanket entirely to her own if she needed one. Then he realized that was a supremely idiotic thing to tell her, when she’d just offered him a measure of closeness he desperately yearned for. Setting his wine on the edge of the hearth, he fetched one off the bed and offered it to Ayla. She arranged it around her shoulders, then offered him the other end.
He took it, and found they were sitting side by side now, arms so close every small movement risked the two of them bumping against each other. Surely Ayla hadn’t meantthis, when she’d asked him to share a blanket. But the lady sipped her wine and stared at the fire, looking unbothered. Her eyes flicked his way, as if she’d noticed he was staring at her. And of course she had; he was practically on top of her.
“Are you warm?” Niel asked abruptly.
“Much better, thank you.”
Her lips curled slightly at the edge, soft and sweet and giving him a smile that was a little amused, like a cat watching a mouse it had trapped. He couldn’t look away from those lips.
“Can I…” he started to ask, without thinking, and then realized he was about to do something idiotic. He shut his mouth and cleared his throat, looking away from her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He wasmarried. Well, not all-the-way married, and he was never going to be, and he couldn’t care less about Hildegund. But Ayla… Ayla had just escaped a marriage. She’d said she didn’t want another one. Not that it was marriage on Niel’s mind, but just because she seemed to enjoy his company these days didn’t mean she wanted…
“What?” Ayla pushed. “You were going to ask something.”
“It was foolish,” he said quietly.
“Then be foolish.”
He couldn’t ask her to kiss him. She might not want to. And then everything would go odd between them. She was still his captive, in a sense, even if everything between them had shifted. What if she didn’t feel she could say no?
“Is kissing nice?” Niel asked hoarsely.
Ayla blinked at him, then lifted an eyebrow.
“It depends entirely on who you are kissing.”
“Ah,” he said, because he feared he was not capable of saying much more than that. Ayla stared at him for a long moment, and he braced himself for her to askhave you really never kissed anyone, which was not a question he particularly wanted to answer.
“Would you like to kissme?” she asked instead, at last, and she still sounded a little amused, though not in a cruel way. He looked at her bleakly, his heart going so fast it was at risk of failing him altogether.
“I cannot tell if that is an invitation, or just a question,” Niel muttered, feeling suddenly as though it was gettingquitehot in front of the fire.
She tilted her chin up towards him, eyelids half-lowered, and did not answer.
Niel stared, and tried to put a coherent thought together. The power of words left his body entirely. She had notanswered.But the way she was looking at him, was that—was he supposed to—he didn’t want to guess wrong, but…
Moving as slowly as he could, so that she could turn away from him, Niel leaned down towards her. Ayla didn’t move. He paused when their lips had nearly touched, sure she was going to turn away. The hand he had on the blanket tightened into a fist. She smelled like roses, and her breath was warm and soft against his lips.
And then Niel’s mouth brushed tenderly against hers. His eyes fluttered shut, and his lips parted slightly. There was a stirring low in his body, and his heart thundered triumphantly. For a moment he forgot about their reality, trapped in the castle with an army outside. Nothing mattered but this, her, here and now.
Ayla’s hand pressed to his chest, her fingers splaying over his heart. He drew back a hairsbreadth, thinking she was pushing him away. But her lips followed him, and so he stopped trying to retreat.
For a moment they stayed like that, mouths pressed tight, and Niel couldn’t hear himself think. He wasn’t aware of anything but Ayla, and, dimly, the way his whole body was going hard and hot, his heart pulsing.
She moved her lips slowly against his, and then he was entirely lost to the world. Niel clumsily echoed her movements, tasting the wine on her lips. He uncurled his hand from the blanket, letting it fall off his shoulders. Unthinking, he reached for her with one arm, found her waist, and pulled her close, until her body pressed up against his. Ayla’s tongue skimmed his lip and Niel’s breath caught sharply. She tilted her head, and the kiss deepened. He caught her lower lip between his for a moment, his lips hungrily learning the contours of her own.
