Breath caught, I try to speak. “I don’t?—”
He pulls me higher, forcing me onto my toes. His hand slides around to the front of my neck. Using his thumb, he tips my chin up—silencing me.
“I know exactly what you’re doing,” he says, his light-green eyes fierce as they hold mine. “And I didn’t ask you to stop. If this is what you want, don’t hide behind magic. Give voice to it and take it honestly.”
His eyes flick downward, just once, to my lips before returning to my face.
“I’m not opposed,” he drawls, tone softening. “But I won’t let you soil the beginning of this with deceit. War with yourself if you have to. Fight me as you take me, if you need to. But don’t draw me in to lie between your thighs while wearing another on your lips.”
Stunned and robbed of speech, I grasp for a coherent reply. The opposite of what tumbles out. “You’re not angry? Why aren’t you angry?”
His hand shifts, cradling my cheek now, his thumb brushing slowly over my lower lip, as though testing the shape of it.
“To tell the truth of it, if I’m upset at all, it’s due to the days and nights wasted. Time spent in needless opposition, instead of touching as we are now.”
I try to pry myself away, but his arms remain firm.
“You measure time as something abundant. A line stretching endlessly before you, yes?”
“Yes, that’s how time works.”
“Not at all.” A faint, almost wry curve touches his mouth. “Not for you, and not for me. And certainly not for them.” He tips his chin outward, as if gesturing to the world beyond us. “Our beats and breaths are numbered. We are given moments only to make the most of. With each one, our choices carry weight. The second we forget that, we lose our true sight… our way.”
My throat tightens. “You say that like it’s simple,” I mutter, and the words unpack a wealth of resentment that I hadn’t intended them to. Maybe because he speaks as if he hasn’t had to live with what comes after those moments.
I have, and it’s the very reason I sought to bind his powers.
“This moment, Eridessa, is the one we have. How we choose to spend it, at each other's throats or held in each other's arms, is what matters.”
“You say that now, but don’t truly know me. Therefore, it can’t be that simple.”
“I know more than you think.”
“Not enough.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “More than enough.”
“Because even if this ends badly,” he says softly, “at this moment, it’s what I want most.”
“You might live to regret saying that.”
“Probably,” he replies with a huff and a laugh. “Actually…I’m quite certain I will, but that’s a worry for tomorrow that I welcome. Today, I don’t really give a damn.”
Making him live to regret those words emboldens me.
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘Put your money where your mouth is’?”
A grin spreads, amusement lighting his features. “Yes.”
“Care to show me what it means, then?”
Then we are flesh to flesh, and his mouth is laying claim to mine.
Not so much a kiss as an explorative dance, and somehow the magic demands it from us both, electric charges now instead of sparks, heady want filling my veins and running rampant now that restraint has fled. His fingers brand my skin, dig in, and mold my body to his. Firm and packed with muscle, slick with water.
He lifts me easily, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carries me from the water. Cool lake laps at my skin for a fleeting second before it falls away, leaving only the brush of air.
My skin pebbles, but heat follows—his body, his breath—as he lowers me onto the sun-warmed earth and moves over me, covering me completely.
