My brows shot up my forehead. “Other room?”
That did earn me a smirk. “I thought you might enjoy some privacy for bathing, so I secured a second room to take care of my own needs. But make no mistake—we will both be sleeping in that bed.”
That bed, just to my left, with four spindly posts and a springy mattress I’d refused to let myself lie on until after bathing. Everything about the third-floor room spoke to lost luxury. Once, this tavern had been busy. This room would have been reserved for the wealthiest travelers—government officials, merchants, an occasional fae wanderer. Humans like my father. Now it was dusty and decayed from disuse. Still, it was infinitely better than a freezing forest floor or temple barrack.
But with Garrick’s eyes caught on mine, the inner circle of clover glowing within the bed of cerulean, any horizontal surface would have done for me. I’d never found satisfaction against a vertical one, but something about the way Garrick’s fingers curved told me he’d know how to coax it from me.
I exhaled slowly, trying to steady myself. For once, it was not ice flooding my veins but warmth. I’d taken lovers over the centuries and blown through them like wildfire in the years before my death. But none had ever kindled this sort of longing within me.
We stood close enough that a heavy breath might bring our chests together. How had that happened? I did not recall movingtoward him. But that was how it had always been with Garrick. I was drawn to him by a magnetic force that defied logic. Maybe it was the Lifebind at work. I’d fought it for so long, but the energy and desire to continue were quickly running out.
I took that breath. Long, deep, my chest rising, my breasts lifting until my taut nipples skimmed across the hard planes of his chest. The scrape of the linen between us was exquisite. I had no words for what I imagined it would feel like without it.
Garrick dragged in a breath of his own, the friction pulling an involuntary whimper from my lips. He cursed under his breath in a language I did not recognize. Maybe it was his home tongue, the one he’d known before coming to Velora. Thinking about his tongue was a mistake, because all I wanted was him inside my mouth. I rose onto my tiptoes, leaning into him more fully.
I waited for him to pull back. I was not going to be the one to throttle us, not tonight. But Garrick did not retreat. He reached down with those impossibly large, infinitely capable hands. One curved around my hip, the fingertips digging into the soft excess of flesh to steady me. He cupped my face with the other, his knuckles tracing the line of my jaw before the rough, calloused pads of his fingers stroked the delicate underside of my chin.
We were close enough to share breath, his wine and cinnamon scent dulled by his bath, but replaced by something else that was just Garrick. My insides churned, a molten, needy mess. I’d take everything he would give me.
He leaned in a fraction of an inch that felt longer than the entire distance we’d crossed since the Mercy Gate.
“Are you certain this is what you want?” Garrick said, his lips so close to mine I felt the words as much as heard them.
There was only one answer. I’d never lied to him, and I would not start now. But I did not need words to give it. My entire body ignited as I closed the distance?—
“In front of me? Really?”
I jerked backward, grabbing one of the spindly bedposts just in time to keep from falling on my ass. That, and Garrick’s hand on my backside. I saw the rejection in his eyes a second before he masked it, but he still did not release me. His hand lingered, his thumb swiping a caress over my plump, rounded curves, as if he could not quite bring himself to let go.
If I’d let him go on a second longer, I would have melted into a puddle right on top of the ancient rug that covered the wooden floors.
“Isanara,” I croaked in explanation.
The look he shot at my familiar could have cowed a dozen warriors. But my little dragon, now fully sated from her feast, merely cocked her head to the side and whipped her spiked tail.
If I stayed with him in this room, I might irreparably damage my relationship with my familiar. There was no way I would be able to keep my hands to myself. I did not want to.
I forced myself to look away from Garrick, knowing the danger if he caught me in that intense stare again. My wool gown was on the ground between us, dropped and forgotten. I slid out of his touch and crouched down to retrieve it.
Garrick growled low in his throat but he let me go.
“I am starving,” I said. “Let’s go find something to eat in the common room.”
I savored the emotions that played across Garrick’s face. Once, I’d thought him unreadable. To others, maybe. But not to me, not anymore. I did not know the name of his homeland or even his reason for attempting the Seven Gates. But I knew this man in all the ways that mattered. That might prove even more dangerous than the Seven Gates.
Worry caused the divot between his pale, silvery blond brows. Desire was the brush of his tongue over his lower lip, stubbornness that flicker in his jaw.
“As you wish, witch. I would not want you to lose an ounce off of that delectable body of yours,” he said.
Isanara groaned in disgust, but I was too busy physically turning my body away from Garrick so I could not watch him watch me dress.
It was going to be an impossibly long night.
CHAPTER 50
Isanara,of course, refused to stay up in the room behind a locked and spelled door.What if you need my protection?I needed a moment to catch my breath, but between the broad-shouldered man in front of me and the stubborn teenage dragon winding between my legson the stairs, of all places, I knew that was nothing but a fantasy.
I paused at the bottom of the stairs, ice coalescing in my chest.
