KYAN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, HOW TOEXPLAIN HIMSELF.He just knew he wanted her here more than he could process.
‘What caused the fight?’ Nicole asked as she turned back to him, eyes slightly dilated.
He sighed, grappling with the need to hold her. He sat on the lid of the toilet instead, releasing her and scrubbing his face, trying not to greedily inhale in the process.
Nicole turned off the water after soaking his shirt and began to dab away the blood still left on his face. He was healed already, he didn’t need her to do this, and yethe did. He closed his eyes at her gentle touch and realised how much he needed the connection, needed her hands, even her scowling on his behalf.
His hands found the backs of her thighs, feeling the delicate heat of her body, even through her jeans. He worried for a moment that the action was too intimate, too sensual, when they’d barely touched after being reunited. But when she eased into it as he rubbed up and down, he continued, soothing himself as well as her while she strokedthe damp cloth over his face. The feather-soft touch of her fingers lifted his stubbled jaw and called up all his smothered desire and affection.
‘We had an argument back in the Wake’s labs,’ Kyan said. He forced himself to shrug. ‘He’s still pissed off I killed Alexander and has something to prove.’
Nicole’s brow furrowed softly. ‘Was he there that day? I suppose he must have been.’
Kyan nodded. The memories of the 1902 oath-swearing at Lanhydrock eddied in his mind: the lash of leaves and branches whipping across his skin and tearing his civil, Edwardian suit, as he hunted Alexander. A seething new scar carving into the flesh of his arm with eye-watering wrongness. A magic that might have been stolen from the God of Oaths himself; changing him on a level far deeper than blood and bone.
The crack of Alexander’s neck in his hands.
‘So, Logan just attacked you?’ Nicole asked as she put down the shirt and toyed with a torn thread on it. Her mouth was tight, worried; her brown eyes dark gold with anger.
‘He baited me and I – I’m not feeling as calm as I should.’ He shook his head, seeking the emotion-honing techniques Scáthach taught him. He couldn’t betray her memory by throwing out his training like a child. But he hadn’t been tested like this since then. ‘When he started talking about—’ He couldn’t say it. ‘I just snapped. But it wasn’t just his threats. The thing is, what I did to Alexander was wrong. What the Wake have done is wrong. I can’t fault that.’
‘But you’re trying to fix it now,’ Nicole said. ‘That’s all you can do.’
‘I can’t let someone hunt the Druids. Not again.’
Despite it, Nicole was his priority, because until he saw proof of this Druid, he didn’t really believe they were more than a hoax, or a mental test.
‘It was a part of my past I’d made peace with being long gone. Like my cousins, my king; the way the world had been.’
Echoes of that magical, luxurious past torqued through his mind, drawing themselves up from the great deserted well of his memories: stars and capes and lost culture; epic, mythological dangers.
‘We’ll stop it,’ Nicole said.
‘You have your mother’s clues to deal with, you don’t need to be concerned with this—’
‘We can do both.’ It was a dangerous promise from the woman who had torn apart a Spectre with her claws and teeth. But her eyes burned with it. ‘You won’t be doing this on your own. You don’t deserve to have to choose between the two.’
His heart tightened and he drew her closer. Her subtle curves met his stomach and chest as she stepped between his thighs. Hunger shuddered beneath his skin.
Was his chest heaving? He wasn’t sure, he just knew that his hands had moved upwards, that every moment he was with her he was honoured. By her mind, her care.
He swept her hair back, fingers brushing the warm stretch of her neck. Nicole shivered, and he noted a small freckle at the base of her throat on the right-hand side. Stroked it with a thick, rough thumb.
Her lips parted on a breathy exhale. If they didn’t stop, he’d find a hundred ways to keep her here. To finally kiss her the way he needed. To be alone, and together. So he could strip off the little shirt his fingers tangled with slowly and show herhow muchhe missed her, how he wanted to make up for everything by worshipping her—
His teeth ground so hard he could swear she heard it.
They had a mission to complete. The day was waning, and Empyreals were prowling.
He couldn’t.
Heshouldn’t.
But he really fucking wanted to. And not kissing her when her eyes were so dark and she near vibrated with yearning might kill him.
She really had no idea that gaze was a fist around his heart.
Kyan tucked a finger under her chin and lifted it slightly, brushing his lips across the corner of her mouth, cursing and praising the temptation of her.
