“He’s sitting on your knee now.”
Edgar had, in fact, hopped from the railing to Lucian’s thigh and settled there. Lucian looked down at the bird. The bird looked up at Lucian. Neither moved to correct the situation.
I bit back a laugh that hurt my ribs. The fearsome lycan king and his best friend was a bird.
Late afternoon light caught the angles of his jaw. He was beautiful. All three of them were beautiful. But Lucian’s beauty was the kind that ambushed you. A regal and elegant beauty. You’d forget, because he was commanding and serious and had a raven on his lap, and then the light would catch him wrong and your chest would cave in.
He glanced up. His gold eyes tracked from my face down to where my shirt had ridden up over the bump, a slow sweep that left heat in its wake, and the possessiveness in that gaze made my skin flush from collarbone to navel.
The way Lucian looked at me wasn’t subtle. It was consuming. Every time those eyes moved over my body I felt it in places with the memory of his mouth on my inner thigh.
Edgar took flight. Even the raven knew when to leave.
I sat beside him on the step. The pancakes were decent. Not Percy’s burnt recipe, which I now craved with an intensity that defied logic, but the diner’s reliable version that had become comfort food by repetition.
Lucian’s reached for the small of my back.
Settled there with the possessive warmth that was as natural to him as breathing. His thumb traced a small circle against my spine through my shirt and my core clenched in response because apparently even Lucian’s thumb was enough to make my body ready itself for contact that wasn’t going to happen on a porch in broad daylight.
My breasts ached. My skin felt too tight.
Every nerve ending from my waist down was suddenly, acutely awake.
“Stop that,” I said.
“Stop what?”
“The circle thing. With your thumb.”
“This?” He did it again. Deliberately. His mouth curved a little. He knew. He could smell exactly what that thumb was doing to me and the bastard was enjoying it.
“Yes, that. It’s distracting.”
“You’re eating pancakes on a porch. What am I distracting you from?”
“Rational thought. Basic motor function. The ability to chew without incident.”
His hand pressed flatter against my back. Just there. Warm.
The bond vibrated between us with the steady pulse that had become my baseline, connecting me to the man beside me and the man fixing my plumbing and the man eating stolen pancakes at my counter.
The sun was dropping toward the tree line.
The sky shifted from blue to amber to the deep gold that turned Ashvale’s main street into a painting no one had commissioned.
I leaned against Lucian’s shoulder. The obsidian pendant caught the sunset light at my throat, and I pressed my thumb against its polished surface out of habit. The gesture I’d been repeating since the day he’d clasped it around my neck.
Given to mark belonging, not ownership.
I looked at the tree line. At the mountains beyond the town. The sky turned colors that didn’t exist in any paint set, and the thought that had been building for days, maybe weeks, pressed against my teeth until holding it back felt more exhausting than saying it.
“Lucian.”
“Mm.”
“Can I go to Veyndral now?”
His hand stilled on my back. The thumb stopped its circle. The silence lasted three full seconds, which for Lucian was the equivalent of a standing ovation.
