“I would carry Tamra and you would carry Gallium and your family would come with us too and we would never be lost.” Her hand closes around my palm. “When I said that to you, you looked at me as if I’d broken your heart. I didn’t understand why, but I do now.”
Her voice lowers to a bare whisper. “We have both lost too much. But I won’t lose any more. I won’t lose my sister or my brother. And I won’t lose you.”
She slips forward onto my lap, her arms wrapping around me, her lips seeking mine.
Her kisses ease my frayed thoughts, calming the fears that, even now, push at me.
She traces a path to the base of my coat, tugging it apart, reaching for the bare skin beneath it. My stomach muscles tighten at her touch, my body responding to her nearness.
Her fingers are warm, her cheeks no longer pale, even though her eyes are still bright with tears.
Softly, she says, “We’re alone until midnight.”
I nod, not wanting to break this moment in which her touch is everything.
Her left hand rests against my side, her other hand reaching up to trace my jaw before she drops quiet kisses on my cheeks, my chin, and then back to my mouth.
“We’re both free now,” she says, searching my eyes. “I choose to be with you. As myself. For myself.”
Neither one of us has power over the other any longer. I don’t hold her captive. We aren’t at the whim of the fae. She isn’t fighting off the darkness in Malak’s medallion.
I wrap my arms around her, my forehead pressing to hers as I inhale her scent, now tinged with a hint of wild snow.
“Erik? Will you fuck me?”
Fucking. It feels like entirely the wrong word for what we do. The way she shares her body with me is beyond the physical act, every kiss and every stroke carrying her thoughts and feelings and her trust in me to keep her heart safe.
With a groan, I answer her by capturing her lips, pulling her closer. My body hardens beneath her as she wraps her legs around my hips and pushes at my coat and tunic.
My clothing comes free, dropping to the floor beside us.
She reaches for her own upper garments, dispensing with them quickly before standing and removing her pants.
She’s completely naked and seems fully at ease in front of me as she moves to drop back to the floor beside me.
Before she can descend, I rise to my feet, my arms slipping around her waist.
I capture her mouth with mine.
“Asha,” I groan, sweeping her upward, guiding her legs around my hips as I drive us back toward the steps that lead up to the loft.
It’s not so far away from the fire that we’ll be cold and it will give me the access to her body that I crave.
I lower her down onto one of the steps, trailing kisses across her chest. I stop to kiss her breasts before I settle into a kneeling position at the base of the stairs.
She moans as my mouth closes over her breast, her hands tangling in my hair as I move lower, trailing kisses across her stomach. My lips brush across the top of one of her thighs and then the other while she closes her eyes and inches closer to the edge of the step.
When I lower my mouth to her center, she moans and pushes her pelvis toward me, her fingers tightening around my head.
I will never grow tired of how she tastes beneath my tongue—will never take for granted how close she invites me as she rocks against my mouth.
Her breathing grows rapid. I sense the tension growing in her stomach and the clench of her thighs, and everything in me wants to bring her to the crash like this, but she lurches forward, her hands landing on my chest and pushing me backward.
She can’t hurt me, and I don’t care about the hard floor beneath my back as she pulls at my pants. She removes them swiftly before she drops down again, straddling me.
I reach for her, gripping her hips as she takes hold of me and lowers herself onto me.
Damn. She takes my breath away.
