Noting my concern, he smiled and took one of my hands, drawing it to the rough skin of what felt already to be a scar from his duel with the guard.
“It still hurts sometimes,” he said.
Of course it did. It was so easy to forget, with the miraculous way Neirin healed, but it had been only days. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Keeping my hand, he stood, pulling me up with him.
Though I kept my eyes on his, I was aware of his obvious desire, and I wet my lips at the thought of being with him again. “You should rest,” I said, voice hesitant. “Let it heal.”
The bond drew me to him in a way I’d never experienced with another man. It was a yearning that sparked at the slightest implication. It was the need to be claimed, to become one in themost intimate of ways. It wasn’t on my mind when I stepped forward. Yet now, standing so near to him, the call tugged on me.
Neirin huffed with his amusement. Drawing me from the depths of my thoughts, he brought my hand to his cock with a glint of wickedness in his eyes. My fingers wrapped, and his length pulsed beneath my grasp.
“Does it seem like I want to rest?”he challenged.
Flushing, I lowered my gaze, nervous and eager all at once. But this was different than what we shared before, different from our exchange in the kitchen as well.
“I’m nervous,” I admitted.
“Then we don’t have to do this.”Neirin withdrew my hold on him, intertwined his fingers with mine, and lifted our shared grasp to his chest. His gentle words coaxed me to raise my eyes to him.
I shook my head and leaned into him, resting my forehead on the bold black markings across his heart. I took a deep breath. “I want to.”
Nuzzling my hair, Neirin wrapped his arms around me. His thumb traced lazy circles at my shoulder. “What are you nervous about?”
Heat flushed my cheeks. “This isn’t just sex.”
Quiet befell us, and Neirin’s thumb stilled. With a heavy exhale, he drew back enough to bring a hand between our bodies and coax my chin up. “No, love.”
“That is what scares me.”
Lines creased between his brows, and despair seeped through the bond, like grasping for something out of reach. Slick—an inability to gain footing, choking as if water filled my lungs, like a depthless sea pulling me under.
A muscle at Neirin’s jaw flexed, and he looked away, eyes darkening.
“Neir, look at me.”
He did, and I drew a breath.
“At the gatehouse, I kept my name from you because I feared attachment. Because it was easier that way. Because I yearned for an escape from the expectations placed on me. And now—” I worried my bottom lip, memories of the night of my mother’s death coming back to me. “With what I know now, maybe I should fear intimacy.”
“With what you know now?” Concern laced his expression.
Shaking my head, I sucked in my lips. “Later. I’m not scared … because of that. Not scared of closeness, either. I suppose.”The words caught in the back of my throat, but I pushed through. “I’m scared that Iamattached and that if we do this, I won’t be able to move past it. Move past you. And if you leave me, if we fall apart, I will never heal from it.”
Neirin’s voice thickened. “Evera…” With a breath, he ran a hand through his hair. Turning from me, he paced to the hearth. For a moment, he studied the flames, then he turned back to me, though our distance remained. “I have an obligation to my brother, and I must go to his aid before I can offer you any form of comfort of a life or at home. There is a great risk I may never be able to offer you these things, that I may not return from the castle at all. To be with me puts you in danger, this I know. And yet I cannot let you go. Will not. Unless you ask me to. And if you do, it will destroy me.”
Outside, the wind howled, blowing down the chimney. The flames in the hearth shuddered. And when I stepped toward Neirin, the loose boards beneath my feet creaking, I accepted.
Accepted Neirin in all his forms, the life that lay before us, and its perils. Accepted myself and the broken parts of me that would always exist. They formed me as Neirin’s hardships formed him. So, I accepted it all. And when he lowered his lips to mine, I accepted his kiss.The tribulations of our pasts and theunknowns of our future didn’t matter. Only this mattered, this moment.
Sweeping my hair over my shoulder, Neirin kissed first my neck and then my shoulder as he worked the ties of my bodice. With a single finger, he loosened the ribbons at my breasts, taking his time, and I closed my eyes, reveling in the way he set my heart to racing.
The bodice fell to the ground, and without it, my dress loosely gaped at my chest and slipped over one of my shoulders. Drinking me in with his eyes, Neirin briefly took my jaw in his hand, then trailed his thumb back to my ear, down the side of my neck, and to the flowing fabric of my dress. With ease, he unhooked it from my shoulder, and it, too, fell to the floor in a swaying motion.
Bare before him with only my necklaces on, I sucked in a shuddering breath, needing his touch on me again, but he only held me with his gaze.
“I want you to say that I am yours,” I said.
