“Yeah, I get it. But if she thinks we’re letting her anywhereneara place like that, forget about it. Kid already spent enough time locked away in a cave.”
“Where is she now?”
“I gave her my phone and my app store password, so, I’m guessing she’s hiding in her bedroom, running up my credit card.”
I laughed. “You’re kind of a softy, aren’t you?”
“Don’t letthatget out.” Asher sat next to me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, taking in his fire-and-cinnamon scent. It stirred something inside me, doing nothing to cool the flames I’d been contending with before his arrival.
Despite the desire smoldering between my thighs, the mood turned serious; the weight of the moment felt impossibly heavy on my shoulders.
“Gray, I know what it’s like when everyone is turning to you for answers you don’t have,” he said, his tone so suddenly gentle it made my heart squeeze. “When you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders because you know one wrong move can send the whole thing tumbling to the ground. I know what it feels like when you want more than anything to do the right thing, only you don’t know what the fuck that thing might be. And most of all, I know you. Not as well as Ronan does. But I know you.”
I lifted my head to meet his eyes, and he pressed his hand to my heart, fingertips grazing my collarbone.
“I see you, Gray Desario. I feel the dark magic pulsing through you. The doubts. What they’re doing to you. I feel everything you feel, and if I could, I’d take it all away from you. Carry it so you wouldn’t have to. Even the most painful parts.”
“I know.” My voice threatened to break, but I wouldn’t fall apart. Not now. Not when everyone was counting on me. “I have to learn to live with it, though. To control it, channel it. It’s my fate, right? Powerful Silversbane magic, and all the responsibility that comes along with it.”
“Maybe so. But let me tell you a secret: Every once in a while?” He leaned in close, his breath no more than a faint whisper against my lips. “It’s okay to fall apart.”
Asher’s words undid me, tender and unexpected and exactly what I needed to hear. I fell into his embrace, letting him wrap me up in his warmth. His strength.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head and said, “Let it go, baby. I’ve got you.”
The emotion that I’d strangled back for weeks broke through the surface, finally erupting.
I wept shamelessly in his arms, releasing my heartbroken frustrations about Ronan’s deal with Sebastian, my pain at all we’d lost when the memory eaters stole Darius’s history, the betrayal I’d felt toward Liam, all of the fears I’d buried when we’d come so close to losing Emilio. I wept for the women downstairs, for all they’d endured at the hands of the hunters and the dark fae, for all they’d lost before then, for all they’d grown up afraid to say and do and be. And I wept for the little witch I once was, the little girl full of magic and possibility, one of four magical sisters whose mother attempted to drown them out of petty jealousy.
When I’d cried enough tears to compete with the ocean outside, I looked up into his eyes once again, trying to find the words to apologize for the outburst. But there, reflected back at me, I saw so much love and support that in that moment, I truly felt like I could do anything. My crying turned into laughter, bubbling up from some deep, magical place inside me.
Wordlessly, Asher took my face in his big hands and kissed the tears from my cheeks. From my chin. From my neck.
It wasn’t enough, though. With Asher, I was always hungry, always desperate for more.
He was kissing my cheek again, and I turned toward him, capturing his sensuous cupid’s bow mouth, my core melting as his tongue slid between my lips.
We tumbled backward onto the bed, tearing off clothing as we fell, mouths and hands seeking warm flesh, seeking unmet desires, seeking love.
And then he was inside me, anticipating my every need once again, bringing my body to the very edge of my limits, making me cry for an entirely different reason.
Twenty-Nine
GRAY
“Not that I’m complaining, Cupcake, but what are you smiling about now?”
I traced a path along the black symbols tattooed across Asher’s chest, every muscle in my body relaxed and happy. We’d been locked away for an hour; eventually, someone would come looking for us, and I’d have to go back downstairs and face the music—more specifically, the magic. But for now, I was perfectly happy to hide away in a bubble of bliss with one of the men I loved, basking in the glow of all the ways he’d just made my body sing.
“I was just thinking about the day we met,” I confessed. “Officially, I mean.”
“At Bloodstone Park, across from Norah’s place,” he said.
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“How could I forget? You weresointo me. I thought I was going to have to restrain you.”
“What?” I laughed, smacking him on the stomach. “I was sonotinto you! You were the biggest jerk I’d ever met. And that’s saying something, because I’ve met a lot of jerks in my life.”
