He lifted his head and stared down at me. He didn’t give me space to recover, his lips grazing my jawline, his exhalations hot against my skin. His hand slid from my waist to cradle the sides of my face again, holding me in place, even as I arched closer, my arms looping around his neck to keep him near.
“Reyla.” It was low, almost guttural, a sound more emotion than word. His forehead pressed against mine again, his breathing ragged. “You ruin me.”
“Good.” The single word carried more defiance than I’d intended, but it was true. “I think you need to be ruined.”
His laugh broke across my cheek, too worn to carry much humor. He pulled back enough to look down at me, and the wild disarray of emotions in his eyes made my chest hurt. “I would strip this world down to the stone for you. Be all for you. Die for you and beg the fates to revive me only so I could die for you once more.”
His words crushed me, and I clung to his arms, holding on to keep from falling apart.
“Don’t say that,” I said. “I don't want that sacrifice.”
“It's already too late. The promise is yours.”
He kissed me again, slower, gentler, though no less filled with need. His hands framed my face like I was something fragile, yet his mouth told a completely different story. He kissed me like he was sealing the memory of my lips to his very soul.
I could taste it now. The despair he wasn’t saying out loud. The knowledge we both carried but wouldn’t name. The unspoken truth that whispered louder than anything in the room.
Four weeks and three days until I lost them both if I couldn’t end the curse.
It wasn’t fair. Not when there was so much left between us. If I couldn’t find a way?—
I kissed him harder, sharper, my nails biting into his forearms to remind myself of the space he still occupied here and now. This moment was ours, and I wouldn’t surrender it to the weight pressing down on me.
When he finally pulled his mouth away from mine, his eyelids lowered. I worried he couldn’t bring himself to look at me.
“This cannot be all we are,” he rasped.
“It won’t be.” I said it without hesitation, because I needed him to feel the same certainty I clung onto. “We’ll figure it out.”
His silence told me he doubted there would be enough time to find the answers. But Merrick was hope and Lorant was despair. Merrick clung to the belief that we would have a future, while this man faced the stark reality that it might never exist.
“Time to stop playing around, woman.” He tapped my ass, and his crooked smile rose, though it didn't reach his eyes. “I'm going to work you hard tonight. You need to master everything I teach you. No hesitations. No mistakes. There's no time for crap like that.”
He didn’t need to say it out loud for the weight of it to sink into my chest.
If I couldn’t fix this, I’d lose them both.
Forever.
20
Lorant
“Again,” I said. “Make it obey you, Reyla. Don't allow my shadow to slide away.”
“It’s listening to you, not me. It’s not cooperating.” Frustration came through in her voice.
Desperation, too.
The feelings were echoed within me, though I wasn't irritated by her.
Ilovedher. The realization had solidified within me when we kissed, and I wasn't sure why I hadn't seen it the first time we met. Loving this woman was my sole purpose in life, my only reason for existing.
She tried again, her eyes sliding closed while she latched onto the power jettisoning through the room and dragged it into her core. It lashed out of her immediately, and while Icouldn't quite see it, I could feel the heat of it coursing across the exposed skin of my forearms where I’d rolled up my tunic sleeves. I'd ditched my cloak not long after we got started.
Again, she pulled in power, this time in a more subtle way.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Like that.”
