Oh, Keith.
She put her arms around him, clasping her hands together behind his neck. She could feel the short, fine strands of hair there.
She wanted to get a closer look at those, on some morning in bed, and she believed they could have that morning. She wanted him to believe in it too.
“Ours,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I don’t need a week to know that. If you’re asking if I want a future with you, then the answer is absolutely, unequivocally yes.”
Poor Keith, with the worried furrow between his brows, held on to caution a little while longer. It made Iris ache for him.
He said, “I just want you to know that if you just want to use our match to get into the outside world, I’ll go along. You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to. You could have any kind of life you wanted, even if it didn’t include me.”
Iris stroked down his neck. “But I want it to include you. Whatever my time in the outside world is going to look like, I want to explore it with you. If that’s what you want too.”
“God, yes,” Keith said.
He leaned down—or maybe, with her hands curled behind his neck, she gave him a little push to help him along. She honestly wasn’t sure.
Their lips met.
If Keith kissing her hand had made her melt, this made her spontaneously combust. She opened her mouth to him and felt the hot glide of his tongue against hers. She’d done this much before, but it had never felt like this. Every point of contact between them seemed to send up a bouquet of delicious sparks, a Roman candle flare of light. He let his teeth graze against her bottom lip, just a little, and she heard herself whimper.
She didn’t think she’d ever made that sound before.
Do it again, she thought, and he did, like they were so close now that he could hear her.
Either that, or her body was spectacularly easy for him to read. He knew what her happiness looked like, and he clearly knew what it felt like too.
Iris lost herself against him. Somehow he wound up drawing his hand down the length of her, cheek to hip, and the light, teasing pressure of his touch grazing her breast almost made her gasp. She was, she decided, wearing too many clothes. It had been such a stupid idea to wait—
The oven behind her dinged. Preheated.
It was an unfortunate andextremelyunwelcome reminder of more practical concerns.
Wanting to touch as much of him as possible while he touches as much of me as possible seems pretty practical to me, she thought acerbically.Much more practical than cake.
But it wasn’t just the cake. They were due at Seraphina’s in an hour and a half, and Iris didn’t want their first time together to happen on a time crunch. Once she finally got in bed with him, she didn’t want to commit to coming out anytime soon.
They had both pulled back just a little at the sound from the oven, but they were still close together, their breath intermingling. Iris took a moment to savor the look on his face when he was like this. He was flushed pink beneath all that gold, and his pupils were slightly dilated, his eyes fogged with desire.
She felt a pang of regret as that fog began to clear out.
“I really wish,” he said in a pained voice, “that your sister hadn’t said we should come over early for cocktails.”
“Me too,” Iris said emphatically. “The one time anyone in Purity offers you something stronger than sparkling juice, and it turns out it’s a trap.”
He chuffed out a soft laugh, turning his head a little so she felt his breath stir her hair.
Sisterly duty compelled Iris to add, “To be fair, she didn’t know it was a trap. I think she genuinely wants to celebrate, even if I shocked her. There’s no way she could have guessed that we’d wind up like ... this.”
With visible regret written all over his face, Keith let go. He bit his lip.
Iris tried to suppress the thought that he should have been biting hers instead.
“Shouldwe have wound up like this?” he said. “I know you said you wanted to wait and do things right.”
Shehadsaid that. But she’d said it out of fear, not real conviction. Everything between them had felt a lot more breakable then, and she had still been depending on the Silver Council’s rules to keep her afloat in dangerous waters.
Now she had more faith in herself. Even more importantly, she had faith inthem.
