“Ms. Frost.”
“Or a party! You know how disappointed Silas will be if there’s no party.”
“Ms. Frost.”
“What?” I snap.
“You’re…” He eyes me, lips in a tight line. “Delightful.”
His sullen frown somehow eases. He’s actually smiling.At me. My heartbeat picks up as his words settle into my bones.
“You’re tolerable.” I step away to lean against the kitchen table and breathe. The cottage feels extra cramped tonight. My hands itch to be busy. But he’s already washed all the dishes, the scoundrel. “We should go to sleep.”
Now said scoundrel is standing in front of me, his back to the fireplace. Awfully close to me. “Should we?”
The blood leaves my face, thrumming everywhere but where I need it, like my brain, my good judgment. All I can focus on is how the backlit glow of the fire sears the edges of his silhouette. He’s giving methatlook again, where his gaze hangs heavy, anchoring me.
The silence is too loud. Panicking, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you ever think about how, if you’d gotten your wish the way you wanted, we wouldn’t have met?”
“I prefer to believe I would meet you in any timeline, Ms. Frost.”
“Like one of those fixed points? Like death?”
“Well, yes. Less morbid, though.”
“Less morbid? Careful, someone might think you’re flirting.”
I mean the words to be funny, to ease this tightrope of tension pulling between us. But instead, his eyelids lower, the firelight catching the sheen of his dark pupils.
“Come here,” he says.
The rough edge to his voice sends my heart right into my gut-soup.Oh Lord.
Instead of moving, I say, “Why do you keep one of my grocery lists at the back of your journal?”
His lips part, the surprise on his face gone as quickly as it appeared. “Would you believe me if I told you it’s because I forgot it was there?”
“Try again.”
His next step toward me brings him nearly up against me. “Then you know why.”
Without thinking, my nervous fingers come up and begin fiddling with the buttons at the collar of his shirt. What the hell am I doing? What if we do only have until the solstice together? Why torture myself with a taste I can’t taste again?
I think you’ve gotten too used to starving yourself.
In the next moment, he bends down and his lips flutter against the side of my neck. My mind shorts out on me, all excuses gone. He. Smells. So. Good. I’ll never be able to cook with thyme again without sticking my head in the freezer to cool down.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out how old you are,” I manage to whisper.
His warm breath coasts over my skin, lips barely touching me. “And?”
“Ithoughtyou were having some mid-millennia crisis, but you’rebarely in your forties. You’re a—” The pulse in my throat jumps when his lips brush my earlobe. “You’re a baby.”
He hums against my neck before leaning back to look me in the eye. “That’s the first time anyone has called me a baby.”
“That you know of.” Of their own accord, my fingers flip aside a few stray pieces of black hair that have fallen across his eyes. “I think you need a haircut,baby.”
In one quick movement, he lifts me onto the kitchen table so my legs hang off, my knees on either side of his hips. His hands settle firmly at my waist while his mouth returns to its teasing expedition over the skin of my throat. Never kissing, just raw, featherlight madness.
