Afraid that he may hurt her again.
That he had already lost her.
Afraid that he couldn’t call her home.
“Why do I hear your soul pleading for mine?” she asked.
Cassiel offered no reply. He didn’t need to. The answer was right there in his watery gaze. Her heart squeezed into itself because he looked at her with so much love, it completely dismantled her.
“Stop it,” her voice broke. “Please, stop.”
Stop loving me.
Cassiel sighed as he kissed away the tears from her lashes. “Impossible.” His lips drifted over her cheek, planting small kisses to the corner of her mouth. “You are asking me to stop breathing.”
“Oh, I hate you,” she said in defeat, pulling him toward her. “And I hate that I don’t quite hate you enough.”
Cassiel’s arms immediately wrapped around her, capturing her mouth. He tasted of sheer divinity and salted tears. Her entire body was thrumming, and the bond glittered in her chest.
The rain picked up, pattering on the leaves in time with the beat of her heart. They broke apart with an exhilarated laugh. Standing, Cassiel grabbed her hand, and they ran back to the castle. Instead of the library, he brought her to a set of stone steps that led up a terrace adorned in more flowering bushes.
He kissed her again as they stumbled toward the doors and into his bedchambers. She knew they were his because his scent lingered in the air. His mouth came over her racing pulse as she tugged at the buttons of his vest. He moved backwards, pulling her with him, simultaneously tearing off his coat.
Cassiel tripped over a snag on the rug, and they stumbled against a wall. She giggled, and his warm hands came over her waist, hauling her to him. Their mouths cashed in an urgent kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck, rising on her toes, simply drawn into him. He flipped her around and pinned her against the wall as his mouth planted heated impressions of his lips up her neck to the shell of her ear.
Desire unfurled deep in her stomach. There was a shift in the room. The air became thicker, the sound of their panting growing louder.
His fingers lightly trailed down her spine, making her prickle with goosebumps. He murmured soft foreign words against her skin, yet her heart understood him completely.
Heat traveled through her body as his mouth devoured hers. His hands were everywhere, holding her, caressing her in every way that reduced her to molten glass.
Gods, she needed this. Needed him.
Lifting her by her waist, Cassiel placed her on the table beside them, never breaking apart from her lips. He hitched her leg up as he leaned forward, his body invading her air. Dyna gasped at his sudden clutch of her hips. He hauled her closer against him and she felt the hard press of his arousal between her thighs. Her heart lurched into her throat, pounding faster, liquid heat building at the stroke of his fingers moving up her thighs beneath her dress.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, needing him. Closer. Deeper. Cassiel groaned against her lips as she stroked his wings. They were a tangle of fabric and hands as he pulled up her skirts and she yanked at his tunic, tearing the buttons. His skin was hot and pale in the dark room with nothing but the glow from her crystal necklace and the vows lighting up on his skin. She traced the shape of the letters she had written on his chest, feeling him shudder.
Her eyes drifted shut as Cassiel’s mouth traced the one he had written on her throat. The bond was thrumming in the center of her with a soft glow. She leaned her head back as he made his way to her collarbone, and her heart pounded wildly, all of her warming beneath his touch.
Lips against hers, he faintly asked, “Can you forgive me?”
Dyna froze.
Her eyes flew open as a culmination of shock and a chill instantly washed the arousal from her system. The light faded from their skin … and from the bond.
The question surfaced the night he broke her apart and every night she cried herself to sleep. That hollow in her chest was still there, filled with the pain he left her with. What he had done to them changed her, and only for the worst.
Feeling the change, Cassiel immediately stopped. He shifted back to look at her. By his torn expression, he knew whatever spell had come over her was broken.
“Dyna—”
She pushed him off and ran out of the room without another word, because she had to. Even if every part of her screamed to run back into that room. Because no matter how much she craved him, she hadn’t forgiven him yet.
And Dyna feared she never would.
CHAPTER 72
Lucenna
