“I can’t,” I said.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were bleary, but sharpened as she took in my expression. “What’s wrong?”
I sat up. The motion pulled at my healing shoulder, but I ignored it. I looked at them—these two people who’d weathered every wall I’d thrown up, every attempt to drive them off—and made myself speak.
“Meet me in the playroom,” I said. “Give me thirty minutes.”
They exchanged a glance. Worry passed between them—the questions, the uncertainty. Oliver’s expression hardened, and Ophelia reached for his hand.
“Kiernan,” she started, “are you sure you’re?—”
“Thirty minutes.”
I left before they could argue.
The playroom wascold when I arrived. I built a fire first, stacking logs and kindling. The flames caughtand spread, and I fed them until the heat offset the Highland chill.
I lit candles on the mantel and on the side tables, letting their glow soften the room’s edges. Then I turned down the massive bed on the far wall—custom-made for three, wide enough to sprawl without the edges getting in the way—and smoothed the silky black sheets.
This room held only one set of memories for me. Oliver and Ophelia on the night I’d prepared and claimed them. When I’d worked Oliver open with patient fingers, teaching his body to accept what I wanted to give. Making him ready. Making him mine.
I stood by the fire and waited, pulse racing.
Twenty-three minutes later,the door opened.
They came in together, wearing the silk robes I’d left outside the door. The same one I wore. Nothing beneath, if they’d followed my instructions.
“Kiernan?” Ophelia’s voice was guarded. “What is this?”
I opened my mouth to explain, to deliver the speech I’d been composing in my head, the words that would make this make sense.
Nothing came out. My throat closed around everything I wanted to say. I stood there, mute and trembling.
Oliver went first.
He crossed the room with slow, measured steps, his gaze locked on mine. I tracked his approach the way I would any threat—frozen, alert, unable to look away.
He stopped an arm’s length from me. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the faint scar above his eyebrow, the pulse beating steadily in his throat.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
I looked down at my trembling hands.
“I need—” The word caught. I tried again. “I want?—”
“I know what you want.”
My head snapped up.
Oliver’s expression had shifted. The sleepy softness was gone, replaced by an edge—the dominant streak I’d helped him discover in this very room.
“You told me there was something you needed. Something you weren’t ready to ask for. Every time you look at me, it’s there—this thing you want but won’t say.” He took a step closer. “You brought us here because you’re finally ready.”
“Oliver—”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
I couldn’t. Because he wasn’t.
