“I’m an idiot,” said Ger. “I let my fear get on top of me, and there’s been alotof it to fight lately. But you’ve made it seem possible. You’ve made it allbearable. And I’m not afraid anymore.”
He tilted Jack’s head back and pressed a kiss to his throat, sinking more of his weight against him when he sighed and arched his neck in offering. Jack’s hands found the hem of his shirt, tugging urgently, and Ger sat up at once, reaching back to yank the whole thing over his head.
The look on Jack’s face could’ve ended the whole thing right then and there. Warm, ravenous tension coiling within him, it was all Ger could do not to groan at that unadulterated longing. Jack had once told him that all he’d been looking for was Ger’s attention, and he’d believed him. Welcomed and revelled in it. But he was not sorry to see the way Jack watched him now, chest stuttering, cheeks flushed the same deep pink as his well-kissed lips. Ger would give him all the attention he wanted; he would shower him with it.
He made himself grin, far more steadily than he felt.
But Jack swallowed.
“I don’t—I don’t look like that,” he said, as though it were a warning. “I don’t look like you.”
“I don’t wantme,” said Ger.
Jack flushed—but when their lips met this time, it was he who guided Ger’s mouth to his. He who ripped the sweater over his head and shifted their shared weight until he landed astride Ger’s hips, both of them gasping at the way their bodies met. Ger stared up at him, openly panting at the feel of his warmth and weight and the sight of his bare skin. He didn’t look like a gard, it was true; he was softer, lithe where Ger was thick, his body not carved by torturous mornings in the training yard but built of a different strength entirely. His skin so smooth that Ger’s tongue felt heavy with the need to taste every inch of it. He swallowed, aware that his mouth was quite literally watering at the thought.
“I could stare at you for hours,” he rasped, but his hands moved independently of his mouth, palms flat to Jack’s smooth chest and running a slow, determined path down his abdomen.
Jack grabbed him by the wrist, his whole body heaving with the weight of his own breath. Ger stopped at once.
“You wouldn’t regret this?” he said, one last time, fingers firm around Ger’s wrist.
Ger winced; it stung, even now, to know what damage he’d done with his careless rejection, no matter how noble his intentions might have been. He didn’t know how close he’d come to not having this moment at all, this one chance to make it right, to own up to how he felt and what he wanted. He didn’t know how many more chances he would get—what would happen tomorrow, what Adeline had planned, what Avette might do to any one of them, or every single soul under this roof. He was sickof being scared. He was tired of being a coward. He wanted to be brave. He wanted to behappy. He turned his wrist in Jack’s grasp and laced their fingers.
“The only regrets I might have,” said Ger, slowly, searching the depths of those warm, brown eyes on his, “are the moments I wasted pretending I didn’t want this. I want this. I wantyou. I want anything you’ll give me, Jack. Anything.”
Jack’s eyes softened. And when he guided Ger’s hand to his skin once more, gave in to his touch, it wasn’t a frantic tearing of clothes or a quick and sweaty rutting. It was deliberate, slow. Every move between them intentional and all the more intimate for that care.
It all came so easily, Ger thought, becauseeverymoment with Jack was like this. Easy. They found their rhythm through that same intentional touch, and as they moved together, Ger’s pulse was steady. His lungs were full. His mind was entirely present.
He was precisely where he wanted to be.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Adeline
The men outside her doors were lightweights, and for that she was grateful.
Ger hadn’t come back after she’d sent him off to deliver the message to the others, but she knew he’d managed it if only for the very fact that there were two unconscious gards in the hallway, their empty goblets overturned on the floor where they sat, slumped and twisted up in their own stormy-grey cloaks.
She stepped gingerly over them and did not look back.
The library was black and silent as the grave, though not quite as frostbitten as the rest of the palace. She thanked all theDaughters for every sturdy step she took into the pitch darkness, feeling along walls that did not nip and sting at her fingertips.
Her footsteps echoed in the fathomless black.
Soblack. Why were the sconces not lit? They were alwayslit.
A warm hand around her arm sent her heart into her throat, dragging a shriek from her lungs.
“Shit, Ade, we’re supposed to be discreet.”
She batted blindly at Ger’s arms.
“Then perhaps don’t sneak up on me in the dark, you absolutenumpty.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel him grinning at her as she caught her breath. Could feel the warmth and playfulness rolling off him, just like old times. Just like old Ger. Strange as the shift was, she wasn’t sorry for it, even thought she might understand it, in a way; there was an end in sight now. They weredoingsomething, and no matter how tomorrow went, it would all be over one way or another. Her breath came a little easier with that warmth, and she found his arms again in the dark, let him tug her into a wordless hug.
“Whyisit so dark in here?”
