I slid from the bed and drew near him. “In your entire life, you never felt… I don’t know,drawnto someone, without any logical reason?” I was close enough to spot the dusting of pink that surfaced beneath his freckles.
“When you say it like that, I…”
“You have?” Envy brewed in my belly. Whoever captured this man’s searing attention was one lucky woman.
“Maybe.” He tugged the spine of a leatherbound book and offered it to me.
I lifted a hand in refusal. “I have about a hundred books to read?—”
“Take it.”
“No book has ever been able to hold my attention for more than five?—”
“It’s illustrated, Rahzlyn.” He sighed as though I were the most vexing creature in the realm. “Just pictures.”
I examined it and then gasped. “Artemis, the Beautiful and Wild. Where in the stars did you get this?”
“A traveling merchant years ago.”
I gaped at him. “This is a story about the gods. How did you know I?—”
“Your new name.”
My grandfather once told me that acolytes and historians forbid tales of the gods for so long that most people didn’t even know they existed, leaving few who could recognize their names—many of which had blended into our modern tongue, their origins indistinguishable to all.
Emotion clogged my throat. “My grandfather, he… I grew up listening to him describe a time before the Astrals, filled with gods and goddesses and mythical creatures. Artemis was my favorite.”
“Goddess of the moon, a twin, and protector of women,” Raithe murmured. “Fitting.”
“Do you believe they were once real?”
He shrugged. “If they were, I don’t know why our society would hide the truth. Regardless, there are lessons to be learned from their stories.”
“Pahn hailed from a family of self-proclaimed truth protectors who believed elites and Chosens feared the idea that beings once more powerful than Astrals ever existed. He thought it was important to understand how society had evolved, to avoid making the same mistakes that once led to our demise.”
“He sounds like a wise man.”
“He was.”
I’d never spoken to anyone else about such forbidden tales. The fact that Raithe, too, knew of their existence—or at the very least, stories about them—filled me with excitement. “Thank you, Raithe.” I tucked the book against my chest and grinned at the piece of home he offered. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
Raithe’s eyes sharpened on my mouth.
My smile faltered as tingling heat crept along my skin. I couldn’t help but look at his lips, too, wondering if they’d truly never kissed another’s. It was too enticing to imagine, thinking of all the pleasurable things I could show him. Teach him.Dancefor him?—
“Your heart is racing,” he observed, cocking his head. “It does that when you’re nervous.”
“Just a little warm, is all,” I said weakly.
“There’s nothing to fear here. You’re safe with me.” He drifted closer, mistaking my rising adrenaline for anxiety. “I swear it.”
I should have taken a moment to appreciate his sudden sincerity—we’d come a long way from that night in Serpentine—but I was dangerously close to doing something reckless. “It’s not racing out of fear,” I admitted breathily.
Raithe’s eyes dipped to where I lowered the book. Breasts aching under his weighted stare, I arched slightly. His chest rose and fell, matching the sharpness of my own. Confusion and desire softened the stoic planes of his face, and I knew then that whatever was happening, he felt it too.
The realization emboldened me.
My hands drifted to his abdomen that tensed beneath his leather vest. It would be so easy for me to slide my hand lower. For him to slip his own hand beneath my robe and nightgown.So easy to hike my leg up and around his waist, letting the fabrics slide down my thigh. So easy to bring his hips flush with mine?—
