“Willa?”
Heat rushes to her cheeks, and I nearly lose my train of thought as I watch it wash down over her collarbones and breasts. Star above, how did I survive so long without her delicious colors? I’m considering where to begin tasting them when the words she’s been holding back pour from her in a jumbled mess.
“I just…I mean…This is the first time in months I feelsomewhatin control of myself.”
I tear my gaze away from her tits rather unwillingly, attempting to ignore the heat licking up my spine to focus on what she’s saying.
“And I know there are…things…that I can’t handle hearing,” she continues breathlessly.
I stare at her. “Whatthings?Have you developed an aversion to blood and violence in my time away?”
Willa huffs a sharp breath through her nostrils. “You’ve been gone for almost ayear,Niko!” she snaps, her sudden rage as enticing as it is bewildering. “In a world you could touch anyone you wanted.”
If she didn’t appear so miserable, I’d laugh at the ridiculousness of her implication.
“I can touch anyone I wantnow,Darling,” I drawl with a wicked tilt of my head. “They just may not appreciate the consequences.”
Her returning glower is heated. “You know what I mean. On the mainland, you could climb into anyone’s bed you pleasedwithoutthe…the consequences.”
I watch her fury blossom at my confusion, biting back a smirk. “And?”
“And,”she seethes, her skin growing hot beneath my fingers. “I’m sure you haven’t been starved for companionship. And Iknow all of this is my fault, but I can’t handle hearing about it if I want to keep the shadow under control.”
My eyes widen, before narrowing to dangerous slits upon the realization that Willa is entirely serious; that somehow, she still thinks ridiculous things like worlds and time and magic matter to me in the fucking least.
I sit up, arranging her in my lap so that we’re eye to eye. Pinching her chin between my forefinger and thumb, I drag her gaze back to mine.
“I don’t know what it is you don’t understand,” I say in a low voice. “But allow me to clarify any remaining confusion. Thereisno one but you for me. Ever.”
She squirms beneath my grip, and abruptly, I see her unease for what it is: a means to punish herself further. Star knows, I’ve done the same thing for two centuries—drowned in the pain because I thought I deserved it. She’d been the one to show me that past mistakes didn’t have to define the rest of my life.
“Niko, that’s ridiculous—” she snarls, shaking her head as much as she can with her chin still trapped between my fingers. “I’d never hold it against you. I get—I mean, Iunderstand…before me, you’d spent so long without touching anyone, I don’t blame you for needing to—”
“Star above, Willa, if I find out you’ve touched anyone but me in the past year, I’ll decay their skin until it slides from their bones, and I expect the same fervor in return.”
Her lashes flutter, those brilliant eyes shining with something like fear as she searches my face. Fear of pain; fear of disappointment; fear of splaying her heart open and being left alone anyway. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying,” I say in the same tone I’d use to coax an injured animal, “that I could have been on the mainland for the rest of my life, and I wouldn’t have taken anyone into my bed.”
I expect her to be assuaged, so I’m unprepared for the way her expression shatters; for the way her body curls like my words have struck her in the stomach. Her lower lip trembles, and for a terrible moment, I think she might cry.
“I’m sorry…” I say faintly, irritation and confusion licking up my spine. “Did youwantme to fuck someone else?”
Her lush lips press into a thin line as she gathers herself. She shakes her head, then seems to think better of it, and shrugs listlessly. “I thought about traveling through the wards and begging you to come back so many times, Niko,” she admits. “Every hour of the day. But I knew you’d rather be dead than return to your pain.”
Willa’s words dig between my ribs and my death rises from where it was nestled to flare in the air around me.
“I told myself I had to respect that. That you were happy on the mainland…you were no longer in agony and could find someone new to lo—” The word sticks in her throat, and she swallows roughly like the action will dislodge it. “To touch. And instead, you stayed true to me even after I banished you. After Ihurtyou. You were faithful to me without knowing there’d ever be a way back. How could you do that?”
Her words are angry again, but the rage is not for me.
“How could you suffer like that…for me?”
“Darling, you know me,” I tell her with patient pity, splaying my hands along her lower back, pressing my fingers into her skin. “You know it was not some misplaced sense of martyrdom that kept me from another’s bed, nor some eternal penance in service to you. Death is not some fickle entity that flits from one amusement to another, and neither is my heart.”
Willa searches my face, hope sparking beneath her fear.
“I do notwantanyone else. I willneverwant anyone else.”
