He inched closer, the familiar char of smoke and cherry wine clinging to his clothes.
“You’ll have to excuse the forwardness of my next ones, though,” he murmured, voice low. My back tingled, the urge to run warring with that addictive anticipation, the type that swirled deep within some hidden part of me.
“I have waited eight painstaking winters to see you again, and now, we have only a handful of turns left,” he continued.
Our eyes collided, canopy meeting bark.
“I want to make good on the promise we made to one another.” Disarmed by his confession, I fought the urge to look away. “I want to spend my last moments as a living, breathing thing wrapped in your arms and buried so deep inside you that neither of us knows where one begins and the other ends. I want to be with you in the way I have always longed to be. The way that was denied to us.”
I allowed his words to sink and settle into my heart, like honey in a pot. He hovered so close that the tips of our noses brushed, our breaths mingling and ghosting the pane to our right.
“But if you do not wish to do that, to exist beside you would be enough. To talk, to laugh, to cry. To sit in godsdamned silence until the sun rises. I’ll take any scrap you wish to give me.”
Scraps. Morsels.Crumbs. It’s all we’d ever had.
“I tire of scraps.” The words rose instinctually, forming before I had the sense to swallow them.
His chest jerked, rising with a sharp intake of breath. Snaking around my waist, his hands cupped my ribs, squeezing with the kind of desperation I knew only too well. “Then, if you allow it, I will treat you with a tenderness such as you’ve never known this last night. I will make it my last act in this godsforsaken world to ensure your final turns are filled with nothing but pleasure. It would be a life well lived to have you keening in my ear until the break of dawn.”
“Demetri,” I protested and begged, hands knotting into his sleeves to push him away, to pull him closer.
Lips quirking, his face cracked into a smile—the kind of smile that was nosmallsin. Arms tightening, he embraced me, our bodies settling into the shape of one another as if carved from the same slab. A spectacle. A blasphemous monument.
I was on fire, though it was the right sort.
“Or…” he murmured against the crease of my jaw, sending a tremor rippling through me, “would you rather it fast and hard until you scream so loud the First shatters upon the dais? Not my preference, not with an audience, but I’ll be whatever you need for this final night.” He drew back, just enough for me to note the rise of his brow, awaiting my answer.
A rush of icy heat spilled from my temple, sliding down my neck, my chest, only to pool low between my thighs.
“Just be mine,” I decided. “Just this once. Just this night. All mine.” My hands swept up to his shoulders, gripping them as tightly as he held me.
“I always have been,” he breathed, shaking his head. Angling closer, he aligned his mouth to mine, lips hovering over my own. “Eight cycles are but seconds in the eyes of eternity. I’m yours, Ashara, and I always will be.”
And then, for the first time in an age—for the first time since the smith yard, since the whip, since theinquisition—Demetri kissed me.
Chapter ten
Ashara
The Promise
Laurels, lay not thine hand upon the other…for know only the flesh of your God. -22:10–12 - The Book of Dendralis
It was akin to penance, the torment of knowing what we’d denied ourselves until the very last of our turns. Burning with the heat of him, my lips swelled beneath his assault. At first, we were clumsy, having forgotten the rhythm of each other—tongues tangling, teeth knocking—but he held my face with his usual grounding touch, and soon, it became as natural as breathing. That familiar taste, all fruit wine and pomegranates, flooded my mouth, and I lapped at it.
It was he who moaned first.
I swallowed it down like medicine, hoping it might cure the growing ache in my chest.
“Ashara,” he pleaded, or warned, against the press of our mouths. Deft fingers untangled from the roots of my hair to traverse the lines of my neck, his feather-light touch trailing until they ghosted my clavicle. Dipping further still, his thumbs brushed over the swell of my breasts, catching their peaks.
I swallowed another moan, this one my own.
Breaking the kiss, chest heaving, his warm eyes blazed in the glow of the dwindling hearthfire. Outside, save for the torches and occasional glint of a tavern window, Dendra had surrendered to darkness. But it was not Dendra’s prying eyes that had my chest flushing and cheeks scorching, for the templum was too high for anyone to spot us.
One arm still banded around me, Demetri used the other to swipe at his hair, brushing the riddle of curls away from his brow. My mouth wobbled, a smile growing. I’d never seen him so dishevelled,sheepisheven, especially as his gaze darted to our side.
I followed his glance, towards the prying eyes thatweremy concern. A poor choice, to devour each other, framed by the central window. Other than perhaps the dais of the First, we couldn’t have chosen a more audacious stage. But there was no need for worry, not when neither paxiam nor laurel paid usany mind. Many had paired off themselves, clinging to the walls where the sconce light was dimmest or nesting in cushions, half-hidden under clumsy piles.
