“May…” His voice came out ragged and suspicious. “What are you doing?”
I pulled myself back into the moment and realized that my lips were hovering just beneath his ear, while my fingers toyed absentmindedly with the gold hoops hanging from his other.
“Just…looking at the stars,” I told him, with a stupid, mindless giggle. I let my head fall back and the wind ripped away the silk ribbon that had been holding my hair in a loose braid all day. He suddenly dipped closer to the tree canopy and my stomach lurched.
I smacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?” he asked with a diabolic grin. “This?” We dropped again, then he banked so sharply, I felt like I might topple backwards out of his arms. Scrambling to lock my hands around his neck, I pressed my nose into his shoulder again.
“Careful, Mayhem,” Devil said as we dropped even lower, barely brushing over the top of the tree canopy, “or you might just find out if your theory about holding a knife to my throat is correct.” I realized that my fingernails were digging into his skin, but was too anxious to pull them away.
“Any pain I cause you is well deserved, demon,” I cried. He did not answer, just tucked his wings in tight and shot through an opening in the trees. I had not truly understood how fast we were going until I saw Oberon’s tree tower ahead of us. There was no way we would slow down enough before reaching my balcony, and I braced myself for the impact.
“Ready?” Devil asked, but he did not say what I was supposed to be ready for. All he did was drop my legs and hook both his arms around my torso, allowing my legs to dangle freely in the air. I fought back a scream and held tight to his wrists, but he brought me down rather deftly and let go, then flared out his own wings to slow himself.
Acting on momentum alone, I stumbled across the balcony and through the archway, only stopping when I caught myself on one of the bedposts. I slumped against it and tried to breathe through the sheer panic, but only a moment later, Devil was there too. He very nearly slammed into me, but reached up and caught himself against the top rail of my bed with his wings out. We both just stood for a moment, eyes locked together and chests heaving, my back pressed against the post.
Then, he looked up and smiled. “It’s a beautiful night sky you’ve created.”
I followed his gaze and saw that my shadows had covered the entire room, blocking the archway and windows, snuffing out all light except a few of his own fireflies, which spun wildly above our heads.
“A night sky is nothing without stars,” I murmured. He brought his hand up and held it flat, allowing a ball of tiny, glowing pinpricks to form in his palm.
“Go on, then,” he said softly.
I tipped my head forward and blew across his palm, sending the miniature lights floating through the air like dandelion seeds. One-by-one, they affixed themselves to my canopy of shadow in patterns reminiscent of our familiar constellations.
I looked back up at him. “My sky and your stars…”
He merely swallowed and nodded, still standing only inches away and holding onto the bed rail above my head. His other hand barely brushed against mywrist. With each heavy breath gathering between us, the damning heat returned, crawling beneath my skin, but I no longer had the resolve to fight it. I no longer cared if giving in was right or wrong, or something in between, so I parted my lips to breathe him in.
“Finish the song,” I whispered. His expression shifted, going from dazed to intensely focused in a split second, and his hand skated up my arm. I shivered as he brushed hair away from my collarbone, then gently took hold of my jaw, thumb running over the sensitive skin beneath my ear. In a soft rumble, not singing so much as breathing each word into the remnant of space between our bodies, he did as I asked.
“When every drop of me is spent,
and I’m drowning in your scent,
when my name hangs from your lips,
my fingers buried in your hips,
when you have me by the throat,
and I know your touch by rote,
I’m your creature through and through,
my every breath belongs to you.”
The last ounce of blood stilled inside my veins—frozen as a winter lake, taut as a bowstring, suspended in the stillness of the moment. His thumb traced a line across my jaw, then down my chin, and his grip shifted to the back of my neck just as his wings shuttered around us. All I could see now was his discordant eyes, and a sliver of the night sky we’d created together.
“My creature…” I murmured as he tilted my head up, lips ghosting over mine.
“Completely and entirely,” he whispered.
Oh, merciful Mother, help me. I am about to do something very stupid.
My arms wrapping around his neck broke both of us from our trance, and when I kissed him, he responded in kind. At the tournament, his kiss had been sudden and hurried, not to mention unwelcome. But this time, with my tacit but crystal-clear blessing, it was overwhelmingly sweet. He tasted like wine and crisp night air, and moved with a fervent intensity matched only by the way his tongue broke past my lips. I traced my fingertips slowly and deliberately over the sharp point of his ear, and was rewarded with a shudder that racked his entire body.
