Calla kissed me with an open mouth, so I decide to try that, parting my lips and tasting him; he groans and pulls me against him more tightly, and does the same, and the touch of his tongue against mine sets my every hair on end. I’ve never been more aware of a body, though whether it’s his or mine, or both, I’m not sure. He opens his mouth more widely, sweeping my lips, my tongue, his breath hot and sweet. Somehow, my hands have moved; I’ve got one curled into his hair, which is every bit as soft as it looks. He tilts his head, kisses the side of my mouth, and I make a little noise of protest, which makes him chuckle as he trails kisses across my jaw, toward my neck. I gasp and bury my face in his shoulder when it becomes clear to me that there are nice places to be kissed besides one’s mouth; the spot just behind my ear, for example. I decide to try the same spot on him, to determine whether this is a universal feeling, and the noise he makes when I kiss him there is a gratifying affirmative.
I’m not sure how long we spend tangled up on the stairs, but when I rise and pull him up with me, my legs are trembling. I don’t know how much, however, because the entire rest of my body aches in a pleasant, shivery, frustrating kind of way; a little like when one reads a particularly exciting confession of love at the climax of a novel, although rather more powerful. We crab-walk back toward my room, reluctant to let go of each other, or even stop kissing; he’s much taller than I am when standing, so I’m forced to hook my arms around his neck to keep his face within kissable distance, which does make for rather awkward progress. We knock into at least one bookcase; I’m dimly aware of the thump of something falling, but it doesn’t matter one bit.
Bash stumbles a bit as we descend the three stairs to my room,catches himself and laughs, and pulls me in after him. I extract myself long enough to get the fire going again—thankfully just a few words, and not the fifteen-minute operation detailed in novels where the heroinedoesn’tknow the first magic—and we crash into a chair on the way to the bed, which sends the cat bounding away.
Things get a little more serious once we’re lying together, however; he stops kissing me, chuckling at my mewl of protest—and draws back a few inches, lifting a hand to cup my cheek again.
“Is this what you want?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” I say. He has his back to the fire so only the gentle blue light from the bluecap nest illuminates him, but it makes him seem to glow. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” he says, drawing gentle fingers down the side of my face. “It’s what I’ve wanted since the first moment I set eyes on you.”
That’s rather too large a confession to be considered right now, so I set it aside for a later inspection. I take his hand and draw it to my mouth, and kiss his palm. “That’s a cure for a wart,” I say. “A princess’s kiss on the palm of one’s hand.”
“Really,” he says. “Where else can you kiss me to cure my ills?”
“You’d know better than I,” I murmur, kissing the tip of his nose. “You stole all my books about curses.” I kiss the side of his mouth, where his aggravating little dimple hides. “You didn’t, it behooves me to point out, steal the book about water magic, which is the only book in this entire bookstore that might remotely help you.”
“Itbehoovesyou, does it?”
“I’m further obligated to remark,” I continue, tracing his lips with the pad of my thumb, “that I asked the bluecaps to findsomething in the bookshop which might help you break your curse, and they just drifted about aimlessly in answer.”
He catches my thumb in his mouth and I close my eyes for a moment; no book I’ve ever read prepared me for the sensation of having someone suck gently on my thumb—a sensation, it turns out, which is quite pleasant.
He releases me, to my dismay. “Well, there you have it. The water magic book wouldn’t have helped, either.”
“What did you steal from the witch?” I ask suddenly.
He smiles, a little sadly. “You’ll never respect me again if I tell you.”
“You assume I respect you now.”
“True, when I now understand that you only kept me around because you have secretly hoped to be ravished by a cursed pirate.”
“Kept you around? I could hardly get rid of you.”
“Forgive me for pointing out that you didn’t try very hard.”
I can hardly deny the truth of that, so instead I wriggle forward and kiss him again, and the feel of our mouths and our tongues, our hot skin and pressing hands, the sensation of his body, hot and hard next to mine, drives any other thought from my head. I slide a hand inside his shirt and brush my fingers through the coarse hair on his chest, and he runs his hands down my body, across my back, along my hips, cupping me against himself as our legs tangle together. I realize, vaguely, that he’s not wearing his boots, but I haven’t any idea when they vanished. I’d kicked my shoes off before we tumbled into bed, but I was wearing slippers; he’d had on full knee-length pirate boots. Likely some sort of bedroom magic, I think, as he rolls on top of me, sliding the neckline of my shirt aside and tonguing the space between my neck and my shoulder.Household Magicmade reference to the existence of such a thing asBedroom Magic, but Ihadn’t really thought much about it at the time. Perhaps I might go looking for it tomorrow…
The thought makes my stomach twist, and I pull his mouth back to mine and kiss him until the thought evaporates, until there’s nothing but the feel of his hands on me, his body hot and heavy, his tongue in my mouth, the rasp of his cheeks against mine. We’re moving together, our hips rocking, as the pleasant ache deep inside of me expands into something deeper, more insistent. I have the sudden need to feel more of him, and tug at his shirt; he leans on one arm and pulls it off in a single, fluid movement, and I close my eyes and let my hands roam the extraordinary expanse of his warm, sweat-slick skin. I wonder what it would feel like to have his skin against my own.
“Wait,” I gasp, and he pulls back and sits up, chest heaving.
“That was too much,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” I say, smiling. “I just want to take my shirt off.” I start tugging at the laces of my vest. My hands are shaking a little, and the laces seem tangled.
“Here,” he says, taking them, and I let my hands fall away as he works on the knot. His hands are shaking, too, I note. I let my gaze roam his chest; the tattoos on his arms, the movement of his muscles. I drop my eyes to his hands; there’s a spell for untying knots, but I couldn’t recall it at this moment even if I wanted to. He tugs the laces free and then, slowly, begins to undo the front of my vest, the laces sliding through the eyelets with a soft hiss as he pulls them free. I’m breathing harder now, and so is he; when the vest is finally fully unlaced, he whips the lace away and tosses it behind him somewhere, then reaches up and slowly, almost reverently, slides my vest off my shoulders, so there’s nothing between us but the thin fabric of my shirt.
He hooks a finger in the ribbon around my neck and holdsup the pendant, which is, spinning in the firelight. “I wish I’d known about this a little earlier,” he says, almost musingly. “I’d have flirted harder had I known you were wearing the shell all this time.”
“And that’s why no one tells you anything important,” I say. “Also, I’m not sure you could have flirted any harder.”
“Did you know,” he says, almost casually, as though I can’t hear the rasp in his voice, “that you’re incredibly beautiful?”
“You said that once, but you were joking then,” I say, pulling him to me and lying back, sighing. He feels as good against my skin as I’d hoped.
