“You haven’t slept,” I say, “since you woke up. Not once.”
“No.”
I shift closer to the wall and the space between us narrows from two feet to one. The tether responds immediately, like current moving beneath still water.
“I told Corvin I could do this alone,” I say. “Before Gullhaven. I told myself I’d keep moving alone until I found somewhere far enough to stop.”
“I know.”
“I can’t anymore. I don’t feel safe when you’re not near me, and I hate that it’s true, and I’m telling you anyway because I think you already know.”
“I know,” he says again, and his voice lower, “because I feel it. When the tether goes quiet, and I know you are sleeping, it is the only time in a century that something in my chest has not felt like it was about to fracture. I stand on that roof every night and count your breaths through the wall because I cannot tolerate the alternative.” He stops. “It is not rational. I am aware.”
“It’s not rational for me either.”
I reach up and press my palm against his jaw.
He goes completely still beneath my hand. His skin is warm, warmer than stone has any right to be, and the runes carved into his jaw pulse faintly against my hand like a second heartbeat.
“Selah.” My name in his mouth sounds like both a warning and a surrender.
“I know,” I say, and I pull him down to me.
He moves carefully at first. His hands find my face first. His thumbs settle along my cheekbones, and he simply holds me there for a moment and looks. His gold eyes move over my features slowly in the dark.
His hands move to my hair, his fingers sliding into the loose coil of it and spreading it free, and then down to my shoulders, the curve of my arms. He maps me completely, without wasted motion, like he is building something he intends to rely on. Everywhere he touches lights up warm and resonant.
I press my mouth to his throat.
He goes rigid. Every muscle along his chest and shoulders locks in a single breath, and then he exhales in a sound that seems to have been stored somewhere very deep for a very long time. I feel his pulse against my lips, faster than stone should allow, and I drag my mouth along his jaw, the scarred ridge of his collarbone, tasting the warmth of him. His hands tighten in my hair. He draws me back up to face him, tilts my chin with his thumb. He finally kisses me properly, and it’s the most undone I have ever seen anything.
He kisses with complete attention as if there is nothing else in the world that requires it.
When he finally pulls back, his gold eyes track over my face and find what they are looking for there. I hold his gaze and reach for the laces at my collar. He watches my hands for exactly two seconds before his own replace them. He peels each layer back one at a time. His jaw tightens, and his eyes darken incrementally, gold bleeding into amber, with each layer that gives way.
When his palms finally spread flat against my bare skin, we both stop.
His hands are enormous and warm and faintly rough, rougher along the fingers where he has gripped weapons and cliffsides for a century. The contrast of them against my skin is enough to make my breath catch audibly.
The runes along his throat flare from faint gold to something closer to firelight, spreading toward his shoulders as his hands begin to move.
He strips the rest of my clothing away, unhurried and thorough. The last of the cloth falls away.
I reach for him in return.
He stays still under my hands while I work at his own clothing, though still is a relative term. His breathing haschanged, each breath deeper and less controlled than anything I have heard from him. The runes spread further with every inch of contact, crawling down from his throat across his chest and shoulders, lighting the old scars there in faint gold. I follow one of them with my fingertips from his collarbone to his sternum to feel the warmth radiating from it, and his sharp inhale is quiet.
He is solid in a way that exceeds muscle. Every plane of him is dense and warm and real.
“You can touch me,” I tell him.
“I am touching you.” His voice has dropped below its usual register.
“Touch me more.”
He holds my gaze for one breath. Then his mouth finds my throat and stays there, dragging slowly along my pulse. His hands begin to move. They span my ribs, my waist, and trace upward until his palms cover my breasts. He is unhurried about it. It should be maddening, but instead pulls a low breath from me before I can stop it. His thumbs trace slow circles against my skin, once and then again, adjusting the pressure fractionally when my breath changes, reading the feedback through the tether and through his own hands simultaneously.
I arch into him.
