“Nicolaslovesyou,” Quinn whispered in anguish. “Do you know what you’re asking, Alana? To betray my closest friend, our prince?” He gritted his teeth, shaking his head. “Your first time will befine.Nic is a gentleman. I assure you he will take care of you. He’ll cherish you.”
My stomach turned. Yes, he was the prince, but until months ago, that meant nothing to me…and now that I knew him, there was no way I could go through with it.“I don’t love him.”
Quinn’s eyes widened as he stilled. He searched my face with sudden, sharp intensity. I saw the moment understanding hit him, his pupils dilating while he parted his lips.
“You don’t loveme, Alana.” The words were rough, half statement and half plea. As if saying it could protect him from hoping.
My hands moved carefully, blood pumping through the digits in an agonizing rush.“I feel like I’m myself with you, like if we’d met alone in the woods, and status didn’t matter, without me ever saying a word it would have been you. Not Nicolas.”
Quinn made a soft, wounded noise. His whole body swayed toward me before he stopped, balling his hands into fists. “Don’t. Don’t say that.”
But I had to.
Just this once, I had to be honest, bare myself to him while I still could.“I feel safe with you.”
His eyes tracked the movement of my hands, reading each sign with pain. When I finished, his face crumpled like I was killing him slowly.
“You can’t.” His throat bobbed.
I was a fool for saying a word of it. I should have accepted the hand I was dealt and find happiness with the prince. But I couldn’t stop myself.“Soon I’ll belong to him forever, pretending and performing just as I have since coming to this godsforsaken castle. I don’t want to be chosen. For once in my life, I want to choose.”
“Donotask this of me!” Quinn tore away, approaching the lantern. The light flickered. “I am not a traitor!”
I stared at his shoulders, watching their rise and fall, then lowered my head with regret. Humiliation. My heart ached as if it had been ripped out and sewn back in, every beat a dull, persistent ache.
The wind whispered through the hedges. Quinn’s uneven breathing grew louder.
“Damn you,” Quinn whispered.
I couldn’t tell if that was intended for me, Nicolas, or himself.
He turned back, his face a battlefield. He crossed the space between us as though leaping flames, taking a firm hold of my face so that I could not move from his grasp.
“I am not a traitor,” he repeated. My eyes widened, measuring that danger in his gaze. His touch hurt, fingertips digging into my skin. “I’m—”
His mouth found mine.
The kiss was spectral at first; a question, a hesitation, the last thread of his honor suspended between blades. His lips were soft, barely a graze against my own as the shadows around us leaned in. The air grew thick, like the garden itself held its breath.
I pulled his doublet, and I sensed the darkness dance around his shoulders like smoke.
The thread snapped.
Quinn made a sound of surrender, a near-whimper, and tugged my hair, toppling my circlet to the ground. His arms came around me so I couldn’t pull away, couldn’t go back on my desires, as his mouth slanted over mine in desperate, long-suppressed hunger. I gasped, startled by the heat of him, and he swallowed the sound, walking us backwards until my spine leaned into the hedge wall, my body caged by his. And I welcomed it.
He groaned, tongue brushing my lower lip so that all the flesh on my body prickled. “Gods, help me, I’ve wanted you since you poisoned Percy. What does that say about me?”
I silenced him with another kiss, fingers fumbling with the buttons of his coat. He caught my hands and pinned them above my head, running his teeth over the line of my throat, down to the edge of my gown. His grip tightened beyond what the gentle viscount would dare, like something else moved through him now at every point where our bodies touched. My head spun, the stars overhead turning about in courtly dance. I couldn’t move at all likethis, nor did I desire to; he could have me upside down, if he so wished, so long as he kept kissing me. Kept looking at me with those blown-wide pupils.
“Stop me, Alana. This is…” he said hoarsely, words dying in his throat as my back arched against him. An inferno spread through me, burning where his hips pressed between my thighs. He claimed my mouth again, freeing one hand to pull at my dress. I fought to suppress a moan, to withhold any noise at all as his fingers found the skin of my shoulder, and his groans were absolute sin.
He lifted me easily, holding me beneath my rear as my legs wrapped around him. The hedge scratched my back but I didn’t care, too lost in the heat of his mouth on my lips, my neck; in the way his fingers sank into my curves.
“The bench,” he rasped, touching his forehead to mine. I’d never heard a finer idea.
Quinn carried me there, laying me back on the stone with shaking hands. The moon was out, painting part of him in alabaster while the firelight gave him a warring glow. He hardly blinked, as though he feared he might miss a moment of this, of us. Then he kneeled in front of me, a hand tracing from the ankle up, pushing silk skirts higher.
I reached for him, pulling him back upon me. He went willingly, covering my body with his while that hand kept probing. The weight of him was just right, and as his fingers slid higher up my thigh, I felt another sort of pressure from his waist. Delicate as I tried to be, I had to breathe. My gasp was silent but sharp, more air than noise. It doubled when the pads of his fingertips brushed where my every nerve converged with practiced pressure. My nails dug into his back as my hips canted upward, leaning into that sensation.
