A flush burned up her neck, a mirror to his, and a ragged laugh broke free. “Serve as stud?” she echoed, her voice low and shaky as she gestured vaguely at herself. “Well, I see why you declined. A gentleman of your stature must have some standards.”
Splice didn’t laugh. His gaze pinned her, molten and unguarded in the dim glow.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to. But it wasn’t you asking, Goldie. And… I didn’t want that. Not now, not ever. Not even for Mycor.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want it if it’s not… you.”
All of Goldie’s swirling emotions were instantly burned away by the sincerity in his words.
He hadn’t wanted a mindless vessel. He had wantedher.
Her body reacted before her mind could catch up. A helpless shiver ran through her, nipples tightening against the thin fabric of her shirt.
She bit her lip hard, trying to steady herself, but it only made the pulse between her legs pound harder. Somehow, impossibly, the tenderness of his confession made the wanting worse.
She had to clear her throat before she could form words, her voice fragile and careful, as if too much force might shatter the moment.
“So… what did the Grove Core say, exactly? When it… suggested that.”
His gaze dropped. “It said that the land requires a new seal. A binding of life to mend what death has broken.”
“Do you…” She swallowed hard, her voice hitching as the words caught in her mouth. “Do you think that would work?”
His head snapped up, and the vines along his throat twitched once. For a long heartbeat he just stared at her, as if the weight of her words had pinned him in place.
“I mean,” she stammered, cheeks burning, “it makes a certain kind of sense. Land, fertility, life magic… all that.”
Her gaze flicked to the Thornfather’s slumbering form, then back to Splice.
“And frankly,” she added, her voice wobbling between sincerity and trembling bravado, “I’ve had sex for far less noble reasons.”
Splice’s mouth opened, then shut again, his throat working. “I said we would find another way,” he managed at last.
“Yes, but…”
Her mouth went dry. She could feel the hum inside her, the undeniable vibration of rightness, thrumming down into her bones.
“If this is what the land is asking for…” Her voice shook, but she forced herself to keep going, to bebrave.She drew in ashaky breath, the air thick as honey in her lungs. “Shouldn’t we at least… try?”
The silence that followed was the loudest thing she had ever heard, a roaring vacuum where her own frantic heartbeat pounded like a drum in her ears. His stillness was excruciating, every second of his silence flaying her open.
Please say yes,a reckless, humming part of her begged—the part still vibrating with the Grove Core’s raw power, the part that had tasted how right this could feel.
Please say no,whispered another voice, smaller and brittle—the performative Goldie, the one who knew how to guard her heart with sparkle and jokes, who never, ever let anyone see her speaking honestly.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted him to take control. She wanted to be the one in control. She wanted to run. She wanted to crawl into his lap. The contradictions tangled together until she thought she might come apart from the wanting alone.
Splice shut his eyes, as though bracing himself on the edge of a precipice. When he opened them again, the storm had passed, leaving only a calm, resolute certainty that stole the breath from her chest.
“Yes,” he said, the single word soft and devastating. “We should.”
Chapter
Thirty
The single word—yes—hung between them, fragile and monumental, rewriting the very air Goldie was breathing.
Her gaze locked on Splice, drinking him in. The want wasn’t just in his strange, beautiful leaf-shadow-green eyes. It was in the corded strength of his forearms, the way his hands clenched and unclenched like he was fighting himself.
