I lay and looked at him for several long seconds.
“Yes, fine,” I hissed, after another shiver racked me so hard my neck cracked.
He sighed and levered himself up onto his hands and knees. I started to roll to my side, but he caught my shoulder and pushed me onto my back—the same way the Gray Knight had, months before. I sucked in a gasp, afraid to show him that I’d liked it. He crawled over me, his knees outside my hips and his elbows caging my face.
I’ll get claustrophobic if he stays like that, I thought, in a stellar example oflying to oneself. I wrinkled my nose, and he raised an eyebrow. I wiggled my knee against his calf until he lifted it, then repeated the motion on the other side.
With a sigh, he lay down against me, sliding one arm beneath my back as he did. His cinnamon smell enveloped me, so thick it was almost suffocating.
I wrapped my arms around him and held him to my chest. He sank into me completely, pressing me against the bedroll. My lips were dry, my tongue heavy and limp in my desert of a mouth, and I couldn’t breathe from his weight. But he just nuzzled against my neck, apparently unaffected. His hips fit into the cradle of my legs, his lips on my collarbone as he breathed in a steady rhythm.
Minutes passed, and I waited for my heart to slow. But every shift of our bodies brought a new exquisite pain to the forefront: the curl of his hair on my cheek, the feeling of his forearm where he’d tucked it beneath me as it arched my chest up toward him, the unrelenting pressure of his hips against me.
He pushed up and propped himself on his forearms; I followed the slide of muscle in his right biceps, my eyes half-lidded. I could feel the desire written all over my own face but couldn’t hide it.
He looked down at me. “Are you any warmer?”
My shivering had stopped. I nodded. I knew my eyes were too wide, too unfocused as I stared up at him.
My lips parted. “Yes, thank you,” I whispered, hoarse. We stared at each other. He didn’t move any closer. I couldn’t stop my frantic heartbeat, couldn’t stop myself from feeling the way his body pressed into mine from my lowest rib down, the pressure delicious and suffocating.
The seconds ticked on, our faces inches apart. His thick lashes shaded his half-lidded eyes.
And then—I watched his brown eyes flick down to glance at my mouth. A question, or a temptation, or an involuntary response.
My heart stuttered, and instead of blood it pumped pain, a weltering agony inside me. I was frozen, torn between wanting his lips to brush mine and a terror that he would not like how I kissed.
He rolled himself off to the side, leaving my body cold and too light.
After a moment, he put his lips to my ear.
“Good night,” he whispered, the heat of his shoulder burning mine.
I lay awake and stared at the roof of the tent until my eyes ached, unable to stop replaying that flicker in his eyes.
Chapter 17
In Which I Learn About Myself
I woke to a sudden gust of cold air, so sharp my eyes flew open.
The faeries had taken the tent down around me instead of waking me up. Lene, standing by my side, held out her hand to me. I grasped it and she pulled me up. Gaheris and Sahir both knelt nearby, vigorously rolling swaths of fabric.
This appeared to be the unappealing back end of camping, wherein one discovers that one must clean up after oneself.
Gaheris smiled at me. “Would you like to fold your bedroll?” he asked, as Sahir performed a gesture that made both of their bedrolls shrink to half their size.
“Miri, I would speak with you,” Lene said, saving me from the terrible task Gaheris was attempting to assign. She grabbed my hand and pulled me away.
Lene took me a short distance into the trees.
“Roman may have knowledge from his own father,” she said, her voice careful. “But he may not. And he may not be… correct.” She’d unsheathed her front claws and started scratching at the tree trunk.
“What does that mean?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Faeries are not like these humanlie detectorsthat Gaheris tells me about,” she said. “We can only tell the truth as we believe it. But belief is not fact. If Roman misremembers information his father shared, or forgets entirely…” She trailed off.
“If he’s wrong, I’ll die,” I translated.
