“Yes, little wolf. I’m good.”
Delaynie nodded. She rested her head back on his arm, but her gaze didn’t meet his. She held herself perfectly still, even her breathing growing shallow.
“Hey.” Quentin twisted to face her fully, his forehead brushing hers. He didn’t miss the way her breath caught in her throat, the way her eyes went even wider as she finally met his stare. “Talk to me, Del.”
She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. Quentin fought to keep from focusing on it. She pulled her hands to her chest, absently picking at her nails.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Thatcaught Quentin off-guard. “Sorry for what?”
“For last night. I-I crossed a boundary with you. I’m sorry.”
Quentin held himself unnaturally still, every muscle in his body tightening. “So, you regret it, then.”
Delaynie’s eyes flashed, mouth falling open with shock. “No—Quentin, that’s not what I’m saying.” She shifted again, like she kept trying to make herself smaller. “I know you like fun and easy. That you don’t like complicated. I feel like all last night did was make things more difficult for us. We’re friends, but…” She twisted out of his arms and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. “But for a moment, I let myself imagine something that doesn’t exist. That wasn’t fair of me.”
Quentin was quiet. Even his mind was quiet—processing, digesting, drinking in her words. Inhaling what she said, exhaling what shedidn’tsay.
Something shifted and snapped inside him. Resolve settled into place, as rigid and sure as he’d ever been.
He gripped her chin in his hand. “Look at me.” She let him pull her face back to his. His chest cracked at the faint line of tears ringing her piercing blue eyes.
“I will gladly let you complicate everything in my life. I would even beg you to do it.” He swallowed thickly. “We’re friends, but sometimes I imagine more, too.”
They watched each other in silence—for how long, Quentin would never know. Delaynie blinked; slowly, contemplatively. Quentin could almost see the cogs spinning in her brilliant mind, the way she was working through every possible meaning to his words, every possible outcome that could burst from this.
“I’m not what you want,” she finally said, so soft it was hardly more than a whisper on the morning breeze.
Quentin couldn’t hold back his low chuckle.
“Oh, Delaynie,” he murmured. “You are so right about so many things…and so wrong about that.”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
He moved slowly. Afraid to frighten her, but desperate to touch her. He gently swept the pad of his finger across her cheek, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.
“You areeverythingthat I want. You are beautiful and smart and full of fire. You are a warrior and a queen and a tempest in the mountains. It ismewho could never deserveyou.”
Delaynie’s bottom lip quivered. All her carefully built walls and masks had slipped, letting Quentin see all that softness hiding beneath. Someone who’d been forced to grow up too fast—someone who had never dared to let herself dream.
On the surface, they were so different. Opposites in every way. But beneath it all?
Quentin wasn’t sure he’d ever met someone more like him.
“So,” she said softly, masking a tremble in her voice. “What does this mean now?”
Quentin toyed with that strand of hair. “You told me last night that kissing was where you drew the line.”
Her cheeks flushed pink again, but she nodded.
Quentin fell into those blue eyes. His gaze drifted to her full, soft lips.
“Still true?”
Delaynie hesitated. Ran her tongue along the seam of her mouth.
When she slowly, carefully, shook her head, Quentin’s body ignited.
