“You’re right: I don’t care.”
“No?”
“No.”
He moved closer, but I refused to step back. When he leaned in close enough, I felt his breath against my temple.
“Then you also won’t care to know that I kissed her.”
My heartbeat did something involuntary, and I hated it. “I don’t—”
“—and when I kissed her,” he interrupted, “a blush stole across her cheeks, making her even more lovely than she already is. Wouldn’t you agree she’s lovely?”
“If that makes you happy to hear it.”
“Yet, you are anything but happy to hear it.”
“I’m indifferent.”
“Your pulse would say otherwise.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked finally, not wanting to hear any other details about him and Isolde. My voice came out quieter than I meant it to.
He pulled back far enough so he could look at my face. “Because you’re lying to yourself as much as you’re lying to me.”
“About what?” I demanded, glaring at him.
“That you care.” He leaned in closer again. “Because you do care, precisely because you desire me. And you hate yourself for it.”
The honesty of his words was worse than cruelty would have been. At least with cruelty, I knew how to meet it.
“Believe whatever the hell you want to believe, but the truth remains unchanged.” I took a breath and wanted nothing more than to be free of him. “Now return me to Galahad.”
He didn’t move.
“Look me in the eyes.”
“I am looking you in the eyes.”
“Now tell me again that you don’t care.”
“I don’t—”
Before I could finish the sentence, his mouth was on mine, and his mouth was warm. That was the first thing that reached me through the shock of it, before anger could organize itself into something useful. His kiss was warm and certain, the way Arthur did everything: without asking, without hesitating, as if the world had always arranged itself to accommodate whatever he wanted from it.
I didn’t move. For a single, damning second, I didn’t move.
His hand came up and cupped the side of my jaw, and the warmth of his palm against my cold skin was so immediate, so specific, that something in me went very quiet in a way I hadn’t sanctioned. His thumb grazed my cheekbone, and his mouth moved against mine with an unhurried deliberateness.
Then his tongue touched mine. And my knees did something I would never forgive them for. The stone in my chest where my magic used to live went briefly, treacherously warm as my fingers found the fabric of his doublet. And somewhere in the confusion of it, that fabric bunched in my fist without my having decided to grab it. I could smell him: cold air, leather, something faintly woodsmoke. My body went quiet in his hands, but underneath that quiet, something else was building. Something that wanted more. And it was that wanting that saved me. The moment I recognized what it was, I knew it for what it was: atrap. Not one he’d set deliberately, maybe not one either of us had set deliberately, but it was a trap all the same. A thing that would cost me something I wasn’t willing to pay.
So, I pulled back. I took one sharp step, putting distance between us, and his hand fell away from my face, and I felt the cold of the room rush back in where he’d been.
My pulse was loud in my ears as his eyes landed on me, waiting to see what I’d do with what had just happened.
I breathed. Once.
“See,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I deserved as I wiped the taste of him away on my forearm. “I want nothing to do with you.” I took another breath. “Not your lips, not your cock. I want no part of you.”
