He understood instinctively that she was giving him the largest piece of the truth she had room to give, and that pressing for more would close the door she'd just cracked.
"Okay," he said. Just that.Okay.
She conceded it with a tilt of her head, hoping she believed, for one second, that all of this was real.
He squeezed her hand.
"You can be afraid, and still let me stay close," he said quietly. "The two things aren't in conflict. You don't have to figure out what you are before you let me near you. We can figure it out together."
The orange threads in her irises softened, the predator's edge in them banking down to something quieter, and he watched the smallest possible amount of the wall come down. Not all of it. Not even most of it. A thread. A single thread. Enough.
He lowered his head slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, to turn aside. Her gaze, now clear of tears and wide with a fragile, breathtaking trust, held his. He brushed his lips against hers, a soft, questioning pressure, a test. Her lips were warm and salt-stained from her tears, and when they parted on a soft sigh, he deepened the kiss.
He kept this kiss slow. Deep. An exploration, a conversation without words, a silent acknowledgment of every hurt, every fear, every apology they had just shared. His tongue swept against hers, to comfort, to taste the surrender he had just been given. He poured all the reassurance he had into it, all the promise ofWe can figure it out together.
Her hands, which had been clutching at him, relaxed, her fingers sliding up to thread through his hair, holding him close in a quiet, profound intimacy. It was a kiss that sealed their new, fragile truce, a promise that for now, in this room, in this bed, they were enough.
He moved when there was a knock at the door. “That’s food. You stay put. After you’ve had your fill, we’ll find you some clothes,” Lechuza said.
“What?” He lifted the sheet. He was stark naked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, staring at him, those eyes going almost to a glittering gold. “How’s that for restraint?”
His jaw dropped. “Did Killa Saqra Rumi make a fucking joke?” He watched as she took an enormous tray from a woman at the door and a garment bag.
He shifted his weight to sit up. The ache in his ribs sharpened. His body protested the movement, and he gasped.
She set down the tray and bag and rushed back to the bed. She wrapped her arm around him and helped him sit.
“That was no joke, handsome. I’m not wearing a stitch under this flimsy thing.”
This time he choked on his own spit. “Fuck,” he whispered between coughs. “You’re fucking killing me, woman.”
She froze, then relaxed. “Sorry.” She shook her head, walking back to the table, unzipping the garment bag and pulling out men’s clothing. She chose underwear and a pair of soft gray athletic shorts. Coming back, she said, “Do you need help?”
“Only if you let me help you.”
She threw the shorts at him, and he laughed when they hit him in the face. She flounced to the closet and grabbed gorgeous black and gold garments off the hanger, and slipped into the bathroom, but not before blowing him a kiss.
11
The bathroom wasa sanctuary of cool tile and polished brass, a space designed for ritual and cleansing, but it did little to calm the storm raging inside her. She turned the water on as hot as she could stand it, the spray a thunderous roar that filled the small space, a sound loud enough to drown out the frantic beating of her own heart.
She stripped off the flimsy gown, the silk whispering against her skin, a reminder of the vulnerability she had just shown him. She saw her reflection in the fogging mirror, a woman with haunted eyes, her lips still swollen from his kiss, her body humming with a resonance that was both terrifying and profoundly right.
She stepped into the shower, the hot water a physical assault that she welcomed. It sluiced over her, chasing away the chill of the mountain air and the deeper, colder chill of her fear. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the water stream over her face, hoping it could wash away the memory of her tears, the sound of her own desperate sobs.
But it couldn't wash away the feel of him.
The memory of his arms around her was branded into her skin. The solid, unyielding strength of his chest against her cheek. He’d splayed his hands across her back to hold her. The way he had simply soothed her pain without trying to fix it or diminish it. He had just let her break, and then he had held the pieces together.
She trembled. As she stood there, her senses felt different, amplified. The friction of the water against her skin sent a jolt of awareness straight through her, a ghost of the electric current that had arced between them when he’d touched her chakana.
She savored the memory of his mouth on her, the way he had tasted her, sent a fresh wave of heat through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the water. Her body was remembering him, craving him with an intensity that stole her breath. This was the danger. This was the thing she had been fighting. The raw, untamed power of her own desire, a force that felt as vast and uncontrollable as the Veil itself.
The shower door slid open.
A part of her, the deepest, most primal part of her, had known he was there. She had felt his approach like a change in the atmospheric pressure.
