Page 119

Ty went to shower first, and Kit afterward; the bathroom was all fancy marble and gold taps. The soap in the shower smelled like eucalyptus and limes. After throwing his clothes back on, Kit stopped to check his reflection in the mirror before returning to the bedroom. He looked tired, he thought, and his wet hair was dripping down the back of his shirt, but at least he was clean.

Back in the bedroom, Ty, in jeans and a soft blue shirt, had collapsed onto the nearest bed, his eyes closed. He cracked them open when Kit came into the room and smiled.

“Are you tired?” Kit asked. He could feel his heart thumping nervously. This all felt like uncharted territory.

“Not that tired.” Ty sat up, and Kit reached over to press the button that would lower the curtains, darkening the room. When he stepped back, Ty was holding his hand out for Kit.

“Aren’t you coming?” he said.

Kit crawled onto the bed. It was dark in the room now, although a little light came in around the edge of the curtains. Ty was kneeling on the bed, so Kit did the same thing, bringing them level with each other.

“Can I touch you?” Ty said.

Kit couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

The hand Ty reached out toward Kit was shaking slightly, which was almost a relief: Ty was nervous, too. With his eyes fixed on Kit’s face, Ty ran a thumb across his mouth, making Kit reach out to grip Ty’s waist, steadying himself.

Ty’s hands moved to the buttons of Kit’s shirt. He undid them one by one until it hung open. Ty folded back the front panels as if they were the pages of a book he was studying. He laid his hands on Kit’s chest, his palms warm and hard against the skin.

Ty sucked in a breath and his eyes flicked up to find Kit’s. Ty’s were dark silver in the half-light. His touch was soft at first, very gentle, and then rougher as he slid his palms down Kit’s chest, smoothing over the hard outlines of his abdominal muscles. For perhaps the first time, Kit was glad that Shadowhunter training had kept him in shape.

“Beautiful,” Ty said softly, and Kit’s breath caught on a noise that was half laugh, half something else. To hear that word, the same word that had taken shape inside his mind the very first time he’d seen Ty…

Kit wanted to let his hands move, wanted to touch Ty as Ty was touching him, but he knew somehow that Ty needed to be in control right now, and he held himself back. Even when Ty pushed Kit’s shirt off his shoulders, even when Ty lowered his head and kissed a scar at the base of Kit’s collarbone.

“I want to kiss all your scars,” Ty whispered. “You have twenty-seven of them.”

“That you’ve seen,” Kit rasped. “I haven’t taken off all my clothes around you yet.”

Ty looked pleased at the thought that this was something that might happen. “Do you think you will?”

“That’s usually how it works,” Kit said, and a wave of feeling so overpowering it left him breathless passed through him—a mixture of adoration, which was sweet, and something else, a kind of fear that was sharp, almost metallic. He ignored it. Fear had no place in this room, for these few hours.

Kit buried his hands in Ty’s hair, letting the fine strands slip through his fingers as Ty brushed kisses over every scar on Kit’s upper body. Every kiss Kit wasn’t sure how much longer he could hang on. He had to kiss Ty, had to touch him. He reached for the hem of Ty’s shirt.

Ty went still. He looked up at Kit, his hair tangled, his eyes wide. “Wait—”

There was a crash from the living room of the suite, a sound like glass breaking. Kit and Ty broke apart. Kit sprang off the bed, desire turning into apprehension like a light switch flipping. “I’ll see what it is,” he said, grabbing his shirt and ducking out of the room before Ty could protest.

In the living room, Kit looked around, blinking in the bright light. A vase of flowers had toppled from a side table and smashed apart on the floor, water soaking into the thin carpet. As he pulled his shirt back on, his body tensed. He couldn’t see anything that would have knocked the vase over—

“I did it.” A soft hissing whisper from over his shoulder. Kit spun to see Livvy, translucent, hovering a foot above the floor. Her hands were clasped together, her expression grave. “I have to talk to you, Kit. Without Ty.”

“Now?” Kit said. “Your timing is terrible.”

She rolled her ghostly eyes. “If you’re going to suck face with my brother every chance you get, I don’t have much of a choice.” She glanced at the door to the bedroom. “Tell him you need to take a shower. Tell him something. Then meet me in the bathroom.”

“I already took a shower—”

“It’s about Ty,” she said, looking grim. “Trust me. You want to hear it.”

Kit expelled a long, frustrated breath before going to the bedroom door. “It was just a vase that fell over,” he said, opening the door a crack. “I have to change my clothes, I feel gross. I probably smell bad, too.”

Ty was a shadow in the bed, rolling over to look at him curiously. “You smell like train stations and rain,” he said, a little sleepily. “You smell like travel. I like it.”

In that moment, Kit wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed with Ty. Instead, he choked out something about only being gone five minutes, grabbed up some clean clothes, and shut the bedroom door.

In the bathroom, Livvy was sitting on the edge of the claw-foot bathtub, her hands clasped in her lap, her long brown hair floating around her as if she were underwater. She looked up when Kit came in, and said, “I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to talk to me.”