Behind her, he did not move.
“Do ye ken what is hateful about that?” she asked.
“I expect ye mean to tell me.”
“That I might almost prefer simple coldness. It would at least have spared me the humiliation of guessing wrongly.”
“Ava.”
“Nay,” she hissed, rounding on him. “Ye daenae get to say me name in that voice and think it answers everything. If ye felt this, if ye kent I affected ye, then why leave me to stand there like a fool, wondering whether I had been the problem all along?”
His expression changed at that. It did not soften. It tightened.
“Ye have never and will never be the problem, Ava.”
The room went very quiet.
Ava could not look away from him now, even if she wanted to. She had asked him for the truth and was now getting it in a form that made her almost sorry she had demanded so much of it.
Almost.
His hands no longer rested on the keys as she took her seat beside him. One lay flat on the bench, and the other hung loose at his side, but nothing in him looked easy. He seemed held together by decision alone.
“Ye ask why I kept me distance,” he said. “It’s because when I daenae, I want more.”
The words hit her so swiftly that she felt them in her body before she could sort them into thought.
More.
More of her. More of her closeness. More of her touch. More of whatever had begun the moment she sat beside him and refused to leave his hidden room untouched.
Ava swallowed. “Ye make it sound as though I ought to apologize for it.”
The corner of his mouth curved, though there was no humor in it. “Should ye?”
The answer came out before she had time to consider it. “Nay.”
His eyes fixed on her mouth, then lifted again, and that one glance made the whole room shrink. She could hear his breathing now. She could feel his pull.
Neither of them spoke or moved, but Ava knew with absolute certainty that they had reached the point where one more word said wrongly would destroy what little restraint remained between them. They just needed to take that one step.
And from the look in his eyes, something told her he would not need much convincing.
CHAPTER 19
Ciaran did not move,and that stillness cost him more with every breath.
Ava sat beside him on the bench, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body through the thin space between them. Her nightgown fell open at the throat just enough to remind him that she had come up here from her room, drawn by the sound of him when he had meant to be alone. He could still hear his own question in his ears.
The tower had gone quiet after that in a way that sharpened every small thing. Her breathing. The shift of her hands in her lap. The fact that she had not backed away. She sat there looking at him with too much understanding in her eyes, and he felt the danger of it in his gut.
“Ava.” Her name came out lower than he had intended. He meant it as a warning.
She did not flinch. “Aye?”
The softness of her answer made his jaw tighten.
“Ye should go.”
