My breathing turns rough. “I should be clear that my experience is—Ah, I don’t want you to find me lacking—”
His hand strokes firmly over the front of my trousers, pulling a gasp from my throat.
“Do I seem concerned?” he whispers, his breath warm against my ear.
He’s completely stolen my ability to speak. I shake my head fiercely.
“Good.” His fingers slip to the cord keeping my trousers knotted in place, and he gives it a tug. “As I said half an hour ago, these are filthy and damp, and you must be freezing.” His teeth graze the skin of my neck. “So let’s have them off.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Harristan
I’ve never been an early riser, but this morning I’m awake when the first beams of sunlight strike the shutters. The fire has gone to embers, and the room is cool, silence pressing in from outside. Quint’s body is a warm weight against mine, his breath soft against my arm. The world outside this tiny house is full of living nightmares, and I have so many obligations waiting for me. I’m dreading every single one of them. I’d rather spend my morning memorizing the lines of his face.
I was worried that dawn would come and I would feel awkward. Uncertain. That I would want to slip out of bed, grateful for an excuse to leave.
Instead, all my emotions are just the opposite. Quint has been a part of my life for years, so there’s a strange sort of comfort here. Like the moment I kissed him, what’s truly startling about this is that it’s somehow . . . ?not startling at all.
And now that I’ve let down my walls, my carefully constructedbarriers, the fortress I’ve built around my emotions, I’m having a hard time remembering how to put them back up. This is terrifying. Exhilarating. Last night, I couldn’t stop touching him. I’m longing to touch himnow.
He was writing down the dates when Ismiled. Good lord. It’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. If I’d ever found out, he wouldn’t have lasted one more second in the palace.
But then he gave me that whole speech about my brother and my parents and the whole of Kandala and—oh, I simply cannot take it.
Wake up, I think.Wake up and drive me crazy.
He doesn’t. His breath keeps tickling my arm, his chest rising and falling slowly. I watch for far too long, mesmerized.
I run a hand across my face. I should get dressed. There’s work to be done. Francis has Sommer bound somewhere, and I need to question him this morning. Saeth will give me a report on whatever his wife knows. There’s a chance that the closest consuls will be receiving their letters by now, too. The entire country is at stake, and I’m in bed.
But Quint’s hair is tousled from sleep, his jaw dusted in red from the start of a beard he hasn’t shaved since we moved to the Wilds. I remember the feel of it against my face, against my neck, against my chest, against . . . ?other places. I thought it would be rough, but it’s not at all.
Without thinking, I stroke a thumb across the velvet softness of his cheek, and he stirs, inhaling deeply.
“Do you need me to make more tea?” he says, barely awake. He made a pot sometime in the dead of night when I woke with a coughing fit. I tried to muffle the sound with a pillow, but he heard anyway.
“No,” I murmur. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyes crack open the tiniest bit, and when he sees that I’m not coughing, he stretches, then rises up enough to kiss me lazily.
I could drown in the taste of his mouth, but he withdraws, sliding away. I think he’s going back to sleep, but he shifts closer, dropping a kiss onto my shoulder, then my chest.
A fire lights in my belly, and I press a hand to his cheek. “Quint—”
His hand slips beneath the blankets, finding my knee. “Good morning, Your Majesty.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you—” I choke on a yelp as he sucks my nipple between his teeth.
“Too late. I’m up.” Then his hand slides up my thigh, and for a while, I forget how to speak altogether.
Later, when my heart eventually settles again, the sunlight is more fully against the shutters. We’ve barely dressed beyond undergarments, and the quilts are a tangled mess. It’s my face against Quint’s arm now, and I’m dozing while he sits against the wall and flips pages in his little book.
“If you keep track of the dates we dothis,” I say, “I will have to kill you.”
He grins. “I’m drafting a ledger this very moment.”
“You are not.”
