He tipped a finger under her chin, gently urging her to meet his gaze. “I love all of you, Lilythorn. There is nothing you can say or do to change that. We may not have known each other for long, but I believe your intuition that we are connected. Always have been, always will be.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, wanting it to be true.
“The belt buckle, the chicken, the fact that you emerged from the Dream right at the moment I was riding by? That all means something.”
True, except… “I think perhaps Moriah interfered with that last coincidence,” she told him hesitantly.
He cocked his head in that listening way of his. “Bunny says that sounds like something Moriah would do. And she helped me get through the wards to be with you.” He slid his hands over her in demonstration of their togetherness, which indeed felt miraculous. “And Bunny found me, offering to be my friend.”
“And Adsila went to Rose.”
“All of the great Oneira’s companions,” Sebastien added, thoughtfully.
“They are? How do you know that?”
He tipped his head in Bunny’s direction. “Bunny told me.”
“Why aren’t they with Oneira?”
Sebastien frowned. “He says Oneira went into the Dream and didn’t return. How terrible.”
“Oneira is the greatest oneiromancer in the world,” Thorn said staunchly. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.” But Thorn remembered what Rose had said about Oneira going into the Dream, that perhaps she’d become a ghost now, haunting the waking world. “She had her reasons, no doubt,” she offered, less certainly.
“No doubt,” he echoed, but a line formed between his brows. “Though the Dream is no place for people of the waking world. Rose is always cautioning me about that.”
As Rose had cautioned her, also.
He bent to kiss her again, sweetly, dreamily. The passion rosebetween them, like twining canes of roses, the desire pricking her sharp as thorns, her body blossoming with need like the honey-gold roses bursting into bloom from their once-tight buds.
Pulling away a little, she took him by the hand and tugged, feeling a little shy. Mystified, he smiled at her. “Do you need to stop?”
“No, I want you to come inside.” She tugged again, blushing hot. “To my bed.”
Sebastien’s face cleared and he glanced at the interior of the cottage as if it might be a cave sheltering a bear. “Are you sure? There’s no rush. I can wait.”
“Ican’t wait,” she told him with impatience. “All I’ve done, all my life, is wait and wait and wait. I’m done with waiting!”
He laughed a little, cupping her cheek. “See why I adore you?”
“Do you, really?” she asked, almost wistfully.
“Of course.” He tapped her nose. “I already said I love you.”
She rather thought it was possible to love someone—especially a someone apparently tied to you by fate and manipulated into marriage by magical animals—and not adore them. “Then do you mind me rushing this? I just want this, wantyou, so very much.”
“I do not mind,” Sebastien said, spacing out the words and giving her a slow smile. “But I should tend to Kismet first.”
“Oh, yes. How thoughtless of me.”
Sebastien looked to the gate and Kismet came ambling through, ducking his head to pass under the arch of briars. Thorn closed the gate behind him, though she supposed the physical barrier didn’t matter that much, and Sebastien removed the horse’s tack. Then Sebastien turned to her and held out a hand. “Lead me to your bed, seductress, and have your way with me.”
She giggled at the absurdity of that. Leading him through the kitchen door, she paused at the array of food, having forgotten all about her frenzied preparation. Sebastien whistled, low and slow. “Are you expecting an army?”
She shouldn’t be able to blush any more, but—as seemed to be the way with weeping—she had an apparently endless supply. “In case you were able to get through the wards, I wanted to have food ready. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he said, catching her close and kissing her thoroughly. “But for you. Will you be sad if we wait to eat later?”
“After?” she asked.
