He slides one arm around my waist and another around my shoulders before I can think twice, drawing me closer. “I’ve waited long enough to hold you.”
All my emotions pour out of me at that single touch. All it takes is the brush of his bare skin across the back of my neck, the briefest graze of his fingers through the loose hair at the nape of my neck for the first time in seven years. I feel everything at once—raging grief, despair, and an opposing sense of overwhelming happiness. I want to scream and weep and sigh all at the same time.
He drops a gentle kiss on my forehead and a bolt of lightning shoots through me—lightning coming from him. The storm hasn’t returned to me with his awakening. Maybe it never will. Maybe I’m okay with that and maybe I’m not, but right now I don’t care. I just want him close to me. If he felt the lightning, he doesn’t flinch, slowly drawing me closer to his chest.
“You’re hurting,” he says. “I’m here. Let it out.”
I do. All of it. I wrap my arms around him and let myself feel every moment of fear and helplessness when Howl pushed me around, every threat Howl made against the females in Harem Hall, the moment when I realized that Baelen and I were connected only to have to sever the connection, nights of freezing in the mines, being subjected to the gloating Elven Command and hearing them talk about imprisoning my friends, and finally, watching Cassian die. I sob all of it out against his chest while the water laps around us, and he strokes my back and my hair and kisses my forehead.
He brushes his thumbs across each of my cheeks, gently wiping the tears streaming down them, kissing the salty trail. “Even your tears are like diamonds,” he says, startling me.
He pulls back a little as I stiffen, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile. “You don’t know what you look like now.”
The Phoenix said I was luminous. I thought it meant I looked happy, or relieved, or just plain alive, since death was on the cards.
Baelen drops a kiss on the end of my nose and brushes his cheek against mine. His breath caresses the side of my mouth. “You are a thousand times more beautiful than the moon—and trust me I know because I met her.”
“You met Incorruptible?”
“She came to see me while I waited for you.” His lips brush the soft skin beside my ear. The water swills around us with every movement. “You finally called me and she told me how to leave my heart behind.” His forehead crinkles. “Sort of like the ancients did when they gave their lives to become the world around us.”
I gasp, finally understanding the risk he took. “You told me you were okay. But if we hadn’t healed you in time, are you telling me only your heart would have remained?”
He blinks gently at me. “The Priestess wasn’t overreacting. You were hurting. The Queen’s heart would have wiped out everyone in that Court by reacting to your emotions. I had to act. No matter the risk. I was the only one who could.”
He saved me—all of us actually—from a threat I didn’t even know existed until it was over. I place both my hands on his chest, pulling back.
“No, Baelen, the risk is never worth it. If you had died, then I would have completely lost myself. I would have raged like a thousand storms.”
“I’ll remember that,” he says before he drops a kiss on my lips.
The touch is so brief that it’s over before I realize it began. My skin tingles where his lips touched mine.
I let the lap of water carry me closer to him, drowning in the sensation of his thumb brushing against the side of my neck. He tilts his head down to mine, waiting for my lips to find his. The water lifts me upward and our mouths fit together so perfectly.
Finally, I can kiss him like I’ve wanted to for seven long years.
My mouth crashes against his, never wanting the contact to end. He holds me, supporting my back, sinking lower into the water so I can wrap my legs around him while his kiss asks for more and more from me. I gasp for air when the contact breaks, my head tilting back as he trails kisses down my throat and back up to my lips. I try to press closer, my hands running through his hair and across his back, following every line, every muscle of his body.
I can’t get close enough.
I hate my armor right now.
He pauses, his breathing not quite under control, taking a moment to study my face, my eyes, and my lips.
“Baelen?” I break the pause by brushing my lips across his.
“Marbella.”
I tangle my fingers in the back of his shirt, tugging upward. I hate his shirt. I hate the armor he’s still wearing from the waist down. I hate everything between us. “Please?”
His response is a throaty growl. His gaze is so intense I feel like he could burn through the Elyria thread my armor is made out of. He probably could. His eyes aren’t filled with flames anymore but he still controls all of the Storm’s power. I sense it in every move he makes, the way he’s controlling it, holding it back.
While one of his hands continues to support my spine, the other brushes the neckline of my armor. He doesn’t take his eyes from mine as he asks, “How does this come off?”
I shiver, abandoning any attempt to keep my breathing under control, embracing the intensity of everything I’m feeling right now. I release his shirt and slide my legs away from him so that I can find my feet at the shallower end of the pool a little further away. I tug at the neckline of my armor, undoing the hidden clasps at the neck and down the side. From there, it’s a simple task of peeling it off my arms, torso, and then my legs.
He catches up to me, churning through the water, and stops me before I can start, catching my fingers in his. “Let me, baby.”
