“Your memory,” March whispered against the top of my head. “You’re sitting on the grass, looking out at the lake. You’re breathing. You’re alive.” He paused for a tick. “You just…exist, and that’s enough.”
“Why?” Because it was a simple thing, to sit there and look at something, to just breathe. Not very special.
“I can hide out there with you,” he said. “I can’t really explain it.”
But I thought I understood. I drew fromhismemory, too. The joy he felt became my own. The pride. It was much more powerful than I could have thought in these gloomy days.
“Tomorrow’s the third trial,” I muttered against his chest, and when I was done listening to the perfect rhythm of his heartbeat, I moved my hand lower, my skin eager to meet him everywhere.
“And we’ll unwin that, too,” March said, running his fingers over my forearm as I touched his stomach. He held his breath, too, muscles clenched, but he didn’t stop me.
“And what happens then? What happens when we unwin the fourth?” Was I ever going to seehimagain? Would the Great Clock then continue to work normally? Would time move forward as it should, and would we even remember this?
Would all of this have even happened?
My chest hurt. My heart squeezed.
“Then we do what we can with whatever we have to deal with.” A kiss on my forehead. “We’ll be all right.”
I was choosing to believe that, for now, at least. Besides—I had plenty of ways to distract myself from reality.
My fingertips grazed the waistband of his pants, andMarch sucked in a loud breath, then grabbed my wrist. “Don’t.”
“I’m naked, in your arms,” I reminded him, and my cheeks did heat up, but he didn’t see it.
“I know. I’m lucky like that,” he said, and now I was smiling, too.
“Let me?—”
“No,” he cut me off.
“Why not?!”
“Because you’re naked and in my arms, Velvet.” The way he chuckled. “I’m made of flesh and bones.”
“Iknowthat,” I said, caught between flushing harder, hiding my face, and giggling like a schoolgirl right now.
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand what you do to me. It’s painful.”
I looked down between us. He was hard, and I felt his cock through his trousers, against my hip. “So let me help,” I forced myself to say—embarrassed, yes, but also very,veryturned on at the idea of touching him. Seeing him.
Tasting him—oh, my…
“No. Not tonight. Not like this. I couldn’t hold myself back, Velvet.”
“Then don’t.”
March crushed me to his chest, and I had no strength to keep pushing, so I gave in with a sigh. It felt too good to be pressed against him like this.
“I want to,” he said. “You deserve nothing less, since it’s going to be your first time…”
Maybe I was mistaken, but I was twelve-hours certain that that was a damn promise. I planned to hold him to it.
“What’s her name?” he asked after a little while, and my heart jumped again.
My eyes opened halfway. I knew exactly who he meant, but I asked anyway, “What?”
“The girl in the picture.” March nodded his head to the side just slightly, in the direction of my nightstand where Jinx’s picture was. He’d seen it before. Had analyzed it when he’d come to my old room, but he hadn’t asked then.
