“I know this moment,” I say, blinking away the burn. “We lived this memory together.”
“We did.”
“And yet you didn’t say that. Not then.”
“No.” Ever so slowly, he moves to the edge of the bed. Like I’m something wild that might bolt. Like he’s been waiting a month for this moment and can’t bear to ruin it. “I didn’t.”
Snowflakes drift from his fingertips. Soft. Delicate.
I almost laugh. The Unseelie prince who used to leave frost in his wake now snows like a lovesick fool.
“This conversation never happened,” I whisper.
“No. It didn’t.” He watches me with those winter-sky eyes. “What else didn’t happen, Ash?”
“You’re acting strange.” I lean back, then remember this is my dream. My rules. I reach forward and press my fingertips against his shoulder.
Solid. Real. Warm beneath the cold.
The moonlight catches his eyes as I lean closer. So blue. Like a winter sky days after a storm, when the snow is piled high and the sun is fighting to break through.
And they’re his. Not a memory. Not a wish.Him.
I remember the first time he looked at me with the same look he’s giving me right now. I had to look away then because he saw too much of me. Now? Now I want him to unravel me one layer of history at a time.
“How many times?” I ask.
He pauses. “What?”
“How many times did you try to reach me before tonight?”
His jaw tightens. “Twenty-three.”
Twenty-three nights of him walking through shadows, searching for me in dreams, finding nothing but empty dark.
“Kieran.” I choke on his name.
He doesn’t let me finish. His lips crush mine and it isn’t a pretty kiss. It’s full of longing and desperation, the need to feel another person after too long apart. Teeth clash and scrape. Tongues taste and war.
I can’t get enough of him. I can’t get close enough.
My hands drag him to me by that ridiculous court garb. My fingertips find his flesh, his skin, the scars I know are there, the definition of muscle, the warmth of the Spear beneath his ribs.
This is my Kieran. My Kieran.
I grip his chin and pull him back. “How?” I look at his lips wet from my kisses, then back to his eyes.
“Dreaming.” He pushes me into the bed, hovering over me on his knees as he rips off his coat and shirt.
I hear nothing but the roaring in my ears as I look at him. The defined muscles that look sculpted from ice. The trail of hair leading down, down.
I lick my lips and drag my gaze back up.
“Keep looking at me like that, troublesome thing, and this will not last long.”
I hide a laugh because Kieran is many things, but a minute man isn’t one of them. “How is this possible?”
He leans over me, capturing my lips in a slow kiss that curls my toes and sends my back arching against his body. His lips make me forget everything. How he’s here. Kissing me. Touching me.
