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“Thank fuck.” He pulled her aside, underneath an arbor grown thick with weeds, hiding them from the rest of the garden. His whole face had changed in an instant—instead of haughty lines, there were dark circles, strain in his eyes. He’d fought past the god to the surface, but Lore didn’t think it would last long.
“Worse today,” he said in explanation. “That was quick thinking, to want a tour.”
“Quick, yes, but not especially good. A tour won’t eat up an entire day.”
“It will eat up enough.” A spasm of pain across his face; Bastian closed his eyes tight, but when he opened them, they were still his. “They want to talk about Kirythea. Some plan moving forward. I don’t know all the specifics; I can’t rifle through His mind like He can mine.”
“War,” Lore said numbly.
“We can assume.” Bastian shuddered slightly, like a branch in a windstorm. “He isn’t displeased by this development, though. He likes spending time with you.”
Lore tried not to recoil back from that.
He winced. “But He’s… not here right now,” Bastian said. “Or, He is, He always is, but I’m…”
“You’re you,” she murmured, echoing what she’d told him last night. Her hands raised nearly of their own accord, settling on his arms, pressing at the muscle there.
A pained nod. A rueful sound. “Mostly.” Slowly, his hand came up, settled on her cheek. Slipped down, her chin cradled in the crook of his finger, his thumb. “This is me.”
He paused. Those words were a question. Every time, with him, it was always a question, making absolutely sure this was what she wanted.
And she did. Gods help her, she did.
Lore closed the difference between their mouths, and Bastian sighed into hers like it was rest.
Kissing Bastian and kissing Gabe were such different things. Every time with Gabe was an accident, a slow explosion, the tension coiling and bursting out in whatever release it could find. Want took them in its grip and didn’t let go until Gabe regained his sense of who he was, the things he’d promised. Lore thought, distantly and ruefully, about how it was never her that had to regain that sense. The want, the recklessness—all of that was congruent with who she was. Not Gabe, though. All he had was the fire.
But Bastian… kissing Bastian was a dance, careful, every step plotted and reined. Not because there was any falsity in it, though. The opposite. She was almost certain that when he kissed other people, it was different. But with her, he kept it soft, like he was afraid to press too close, afraid he might let something out of himself.
She could never decide which she preferred. Didn’t think she had a preference, really. Both felt vital.
“It’s always been me,” Bastian murmured against her lips. “I want you to know that. Every time I’ve kissed you, it’s been me.”
Lore ran her hands into his dark hair, anchored him close. Her back was pressed against the overgrown arbor, tiny thorns and itching leaves scoring her skin through the thin fabric of her dress, but she didn’t care.
He gasped into her mouth, his hands framing her waist, one rising to tug down the neckline of her gown. He thumbed at the raised peak of her breast, his calluses a heated friction that made all her insides melt. She bit off a moan, pushing herself into his hands, wanting this to be some kind of anchor. A way to keep him here, a way to give him back to himself.
Bastian’s hand trailed down her thigh to her knee, hooking it in his hand, pulling it up around his waist. He broke from her lips, lowered his head instead to her breast, his breath warmer than the summer air. The tip of his tongue circled her, lightly. “Gods, you taste good.” Then he drew her deep into his mouth.
Lore’s turn to gasp, heat spilling through her middle as she let him jerk her forward, one hand braced on the arbor behind her head. It gave a warning creak, but neither of them paid attention to it.
He let her breast go, his mouth rising to hers again, his fingers taking up the work his tongue had begun. His kiss became hungrier, less careful, more claiming. Bastian ground against her, a low growl in his throat, hard against her thigh as the heated core of her pressed into the jut of his hip. “Tell me what you want,” he murmured breathlessly in her ear. “I want you to make me do exactly what you want.”
Her hand covered his on her breast, his lightly circling fingers. “Harder.”
He obeyed. He pinched.
A sharp, helpless sound burst from Lore’s throat; the hand that wasn’t wreaking merciless havoc on her breast came up to press against her mouth, keep her from making too much noise.
Stars blinked in the corners of her vision, a breaking coming on fast, coiling in her middle as she bucked against his hip. Lore’s mouth opened to gasp, and his tongue was in the space she made, slipping along her own, a skill clearly honed. Her heart was beating too fast, her lungs felt too full of air, making her light-headed—
Bastian wrenched away from her.
Lore’s eyes opened, dazed, but the heat-filled fog around her thoughts dissipated the moment she saw his eyes. Golden, golden through and through, with a smile on his face that could only be called cruel.
“Are you in there, wife?” Even his voice sounded different. Warmer, but not in a kind way. She thought of those roses ripping through Anton, something with all the pieces of beauty turned awful instead. His voice was like that. “She kisses like you did. Eager.”
She tried to jerk away, but they were tangled up too closely; she was trapped between him—Him, Apollius, staring at her out of Bastian’s face—and the arbor. But the arbor was dry-rotted, decrepit, she could probably knock it down if she had to, every thought in her head centered on gone, away, get away…
