She wiggles around so our bodies are flush—a crush of soft and hard. She paws at me, weaving her legs through mine, tangling us together like her wisteria vine bound through the black stone of her balustrade.
Another bolt of lightning ignites her crumpled face as she drifts her hands up to my cheeks. “Let this not be a dream…”
“I’m here. This is real. I’m not going anywhere.”
A twisted sound rents from her as her body jerks, eyes so glazed I wonder if she’s truly awake or caught somewhere in the middle. “I’m not okay,” she whispers past shallow breaths, and the words alone could still my heart for good.
“I know …”
Neither am I.
Threading my hand behind her head, I tuck her into my chest that’s shaking in time with the sky, resisting the urge to squeeze her more than her brittle bones can manage.
I don’t want to hurt her. I want to fuckingmendher.
I’m not the gentle man she needs. The sort she deserves. But I’m done playing a passive role in her life. I know where that road ends—heard it straight from Maars’s mouth.
With her in the ground.
She believes she’s expendable. That she owes the world, even though it’s certainly never shown her the same liberties.
Just another war I need to wage. Andwin.
“Don’t let me go,” she whispers against my skin.
Against the scar she drew.
“Never.”
I wrap my hand around her ribs so I can feel the peck of her heart, nudging her so deep into my neck I can gauge the rhythm of each tight breath until they become long, sleepy pulls that tug me into the depths with her.
My one. My only.
Milaje.
Ipull from a sleep so quiet and still I don’t want to wake. Don’t want to slip off this warm slab of stone I’m wrapped around. That’s rising and falling beneath me like it has real, working lungs, lulled by the slow, sludgy beat thumping against me.
Thud-ump …
Thud-ump …
Thud-ump …
I nuzzle in, drawing myself full of leathery musk nipped with the smell of a frosty morning. A smell that paints itself all through my chest, filling me up—
Rhordyn.
My eyes snap open.
The window comes into focus first, the world beyond it crammed with the powdery brightness of morning, casting dim light through the cabin. I look to the chair Rhordyn was sitting in when I fell asleep and confirm that it is, indeed, empty.
My pulse whooshes in my ears as I register my nakedness.
The blankets heaped on the ground.
The weight across my bare back.
Two heavy,warmarms bound around me. Arms belonging to the manbeneathme—my legs tucked up and straddling his torso, head pressed firmly upon his beating heart. My hands are woven beneath his armpits, curled up his muscular back, my fingertips kissing his shoulder blades …
