Tonight had gone well. Sure, we’d wallowed in sexual tension at the start, but that appeared to be the only way we could communicate. Until he started teaching me. After that, the tension might’ve simmered well out of sight, but he’d focused on helping me.
And as irresistible as I found the taunting, teasing, snide Lore, I liked this one even more. Too much.
Braiding my hair? It had been all I could do not to lean back in his arms. To turn and stroke his face.
Let it go, Reyla.
I jerked out a nod, indicating I’d join him on the roof.
He smiled again, sweet and almost boyish. The appeal thatsmile held . . . I didn’t want to think about what it might mean to my soul. I’d made it clear I was committed to Merrick, and I meant it. I’d married him. He’d made me his queen. It wouldn’t be long before I’d tell him I was ready to join him in his bed.
There was no place for Lore in that.
But there was a place for him tonight.
“Nothing sneaky,” I warned him as he took my hand and gently drew me over to one of the tall windows.
“Only when you beg,” he whispered by my ear.
I ignored how something that simple could make my skin tingle and drew up some of the ready snark I used most of the time with this man. “Never happening.”
“We’ll see.”
A breeze swept through the window, making my pulse skip. Insects hummed in the distance, their chirps and squeaks washing across me in rolling waves.
Lore stuck one leg through the opening and made his way outside, standing on something and holding onto the edge of the window, his gaze meeting mine.
I'd seen how far down the ground was before, and the thought of him just . . . dangling out there with only his hands keeping him from falling made my heart rush up into my throat. “Be careful.”
His hands slipped on the edge of the window, and his eyes widened, his mouth dropping in shock as he started to tumble backward.
I snapped my hands around his wrists, leaning partway out and holding on, desperate to keep him from falling.
“See?” he said. “You do care.” He loosened my grip andreturned his hands to the ledge, tilting his head toward his boots.
The damn asshole stood on a strip of ledge that was wider than his feet.
“You really are a jerk. I was worried.”
His slick smile grew. “And I like that you were.”
“Actually, I wasn't.” I stepped back from the window and snapped my arms across my chest. “I should leave.”
“Please don't.” Only the hint of vulnerability in his voice held me in place. “I'm sorry. I won't tease you again. Come out with me? Sit on the roof, and I'll share all my dreams and sorrows.”
Now that was much too tempting. I didn't know much about this man except that he riled me up like no other and that my body craved him. My heart a bit, too, if I was being honest, which I wasn't.
Seeing that I wasn't running, he jutted his hand toward me. The boyish look on his face made me take it.
With a sly smile that disappeared too soon, he helped me ease my legs out and sit on the window sill, my feet dangling. When you stood on the ground below, the surface of the castle appeared smooth, but up here, I could see it was uneven, with the ledge encircling the tower and some stones sticking out enough to step on. Others projected enough that someone could use them to climb up onto the peaked, sharply sloped roof of the tallest tower where a flag fluttered from a steel post at the top.
Under his guidance, I turned and carefully lowered my feet to join him on the ledge, keeping a tight grip on the sill.
“Rather high up, isn't it?” I said, my voice shaky. Heights didn't bother me. I couldn't ride dragons if they did. But this was unlike anything I'd done before in my life. I wasn't sitting in a dragon's saddle, clinging to the spike jutting up from between its shoulders while it spiraled toward the ground. That, I'd done a billion times. Cling to the side of a stone castle? This was a first.
“No higher than when someone I know poked holes in the side of a ship and then used them to make her way from her porthole window to mine,” he said.
“Not me,” I said, stifling my laugh.
