But then Gareth began smoothing his salve over my fingers, my knuckles, my palm, and wherever his touch went, a tingling coolness bloomed soon afterward. I couldn’t look at my hand—feeling his fingers trace the contours of my blisters was nauseating enough—so instead I looked at him. His hair had begun to dry; damp blond tendrils framed his face. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and the starstone beacon painted him silver—his cheekbones, his glasses, his lower lip. The longer I looked at him, the better I felt. The salve was part of that, certainly, but the warmth, the calm that came over me as I watched him work was far more than just that.
When he finished, he sat back to examine the result. Losing his touch made my body ache.
“It’s not the prettiest bandage,” he said, frowning, “but it’ll do whatit’s supposed to, I think. How do you feel?”
When he looked up at me, I wanted to cry—no longer from pain or desolation, but from the sheer tenderness coursing through me at the sight of his hopeful expression. He looked at me as if I were the first bloom unfurling after a long winter.
The proper words failed me. Instead I reached for him, shivering a little, and said, “Gareth, please come here.”
Without another word, he settled beside me and drew me into his arms, and I’d never felt anything as wonderful as this: his body fitted snugly against mine, his hand cupping my head, his arm firmly around me. He trembled with cold, as did I, but I clung to him, my fists full of his coat, and breathed, and breathed, and soon my sentinel blood roared back to life. I rested my cheek against his chest, listened to his racing heartbeat, and imagined pressing all my body’s heat into his.
When his trembling ceased, I pulled back to look at him. I didn’t realize I was still crying until he took my face in his hands and dried my cheeks. When one of his thumbs brushed against my lips, I took it softly in my mouth and sucked once, gently. His sharp intake of breath warmed me more completely than any fire.
“What do you see when you look at me?” I whispered. I didn’t mean to ask the question, but once I said the words, I felt desperate to know the answer. I had beaten the fae Luthaes to a pulp and seen the revulsion on Gareth’s face. I had condemned Posey to torture and then killed her with my bare hands, and if he’d witnessed that, I knew he would have stared at me with the same kind of speechless horror.
Daughter of Kerezen.
Monster of Rosewarren.
But in that cave, with the roaring curtain of rain just outside and everyone we loved an entire world away, Gareth looked at me with an expression of such devotion that I lost my breath.
This was not the look of a man beholding a monster. Or maybe Iwas just the right kind of monster for him. What had Nanette called him?That man is a menace.A menace and a monster, I thought sadly. We were well matched.
“I see a brave woman who doesn’t deserve the sadness she carries,” Gareth replied. “Someone brilliant and powerful and passionate. A leader and a teacher who is so loved.” Then he raised a playful eyebrow. “And who, it must be said, is so godsdamned breathtakingly gorgeous that thinking about her keeps me up at night.”
This was dangerous, this softness blooming between us. This was everything I’d long ago resolved to reject. But it felt so wonderful to be held by him that pushing him away seemed impossible.
I ignored every ounce of my good sense and smiled up at him. “And what do you do, Professor, when you think of this brave woman while lying awake in your bed?”
“Mara.”He pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, as if my words had pained him. “You’re hurt and exhausted, and we’re lying on the floor of a cave in a land populated by sentient rocks. But when you look at me like that, all I can think about is how desperately I want to kiss you.”
I shifted closer to him, feathering my fingers across the line of his jaw. I shouldn’t have. This was a terrible idea. Letting it happen could only lead to heartbreak.
But still I whispered, “Then kiss me.”
It was like unlocking a door that had been straining to burst open. With a quiet groan, he took my face in his hands as if I were something fragile and remarkable and lowered his mouth to mine. Softly, sweetly, a silent hymn. Heat poured down my body at the touch of his lips, pooling between my legs, and suddenly I wanted more, much more, than a careful kiss. I hadn’t kissed someone in a long time, hadn’t kissed someone and actuallymeantanything by it for even longer. Kissing Gareth was like lighting a fire and watching it burn—first quietly, andthen with a roar. And with his hands on me, and his tongue gently opening my mouth, and that muffled, shuddering moan he let out against my lips, I didn’t care if those flames would simply warm me or rage out of control and destroy me.
When I arched closer to him, his hand glided down my back, and he pulled me hard against him, his fingers digging into my hip. The sudden close contact made me gasp. I slid my unhurt hand into his hair, relishing the smooth softness of every damp curl. The strength in his wiry arms holding me to him and the heat of his arousal between my legs was its own kind of magic. His touch swept away my pain, scorched my sadness to ashes. I circled my hips against him, ready to reach down for his belt, heedless of how fast this was spiraling into an inferno, when suddenly he said breathlessly against my mouth, “Wait, Mara. Wait, hold on.”
I froze, though my body was screaming for more—more of this, more of him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I just…” He shook his head, taking in the sight of me with a helpless sort of look, like I’d won an unspoken argument by simply existing. “Gods, look at you,” he rasped, and then bent to kiss my neck, lightly grazing my skin with his teeth. I moaned, shivering, and canted my hips toward him once more, but after a few blazing seconds of this—his tongue licking a lazy stripe down the column of my throat, my fingers tightening around a fistful of his hair—he pulled away again, with two apologetic kisses to my cheek and brow.
“No, wait,” he said roughly. “Gods, I’m sorry. I can hardly think with you looking like that.”
“Like what?” I murmured, reaching for the nearest button of his shirt.
He caught my hand with a wry smile, then brushed a soft kiss across my knuckles. “Like you want to let me have you.”
That hungry look in his eyes melted something inside me. I touched his cheek, pressed my thumb gently against the corner of his mouth.His lips fell open, his teeth scraped against the pad of my thumb, and I leaned into him, my nipples pebbling beneath my shirt.
“Then have me,” I whispered against his skin. “I’m ready, Gareth.”
He let out a desperate sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Darling, there’s nothing I want more, but I refuse to do so on a cave floor. You deserve better. And frankly, so do our knees.”
“Our knees would recover,” I pointed out.
“It’s just that I want you in my bed, or in yours,” he went on. He pressed his forehead against mine, still catching his breath. “I want you in softness and warmth, and—”
