A coal sizzles in the grate. Right. Yes. Fire. I move automatically: logs, two, three, from the pile, throw them in with a handful of resin that spits and flares into flame, throwing bright light and heat on all of us.
I sit back on my knees and look at her. At them. The dress is a sopping white heap on the floor. Gwenna’s back in Kai’s coat, with a blanket wrapped on top. And he’s holding her face in his hands.
“You’re okay, aren’t you?” he murmurs. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
The color is back in her lips, I notice, and relief I feel at the sight nearly floors me.
Kai tucks a strand of hair behind her ears, and Gwenna wrinkles her nose. “Your coat smells like an ashtray.”
Kai grins. “You’re fucking right it does.” He grabs her, slams her against his body in an embrace, clutching the back of her head and burying his face in her neck, and when, at last, he pulls back, he kisses her, gently, on the mouth.
Then not so gently.
Thenfiercely,his hands framing her face and pulling her so tight up against him I’m surprised either of them can breathe. And maybe they can’t, because when Kai releases her, they’re both panting slightly.
Gwenna looks at me, her green eyes bright and brilliant even in the low light, her lips now very flushed against her pale skin.
But Kai only looks at her.
All at once he takes her again, grasping her waist this time, her hair, and my brief sting of angst that she doesn’twantit dissolves as soon as she arches against him, softens into his arms.
I don’t move. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to be anywhere but near her, but the air in the room has…shifted.
Kai breaks away from her. “Keep staring like that and I’m going to have to charge you for the privilege,” he sneers at me.
His words are a joke, but the glint in his eye is anything but. I know that look, have had that look thrown at me from across rooms and from inches away and from the far side of the piste before our masks slip on. I know exactly what that look means.
I dare you.
I dare you to stop me. To pull rank. To exert any kind of control.
No. Not this time. I won’t be so easily baited, even if all I want to do is stay by her side.
I stand—to leave.
But as I do, Gwenna catches my fingers in hers.
That’s all it takes. My exit forgotten, I fall to my knees beside her, wait for her, as she turns away from Kai, to tell me what she needs.
But when she does, she doesn’t speak at all.
She kissesme.
I’m startled. I fall backwards, and my palms land hard on the floor to catch myself even as I find myself kissing her back, the sheer joy of her touch and the perfect taste of her mouth lighting up my body like daybreak after a dark, starless night.
For a moment, I forget Kai is even there.
But then she pulls back, and my eyes open, and I see Kai’s hand wrapping gently around her throat, his lips at the corner of her jaw.
“Oh, so it’s like that?” I hear him whisper. “Whatever you want, angel.”
Her eyes fall to me. She grips the front of my sweater, pulls me closer to her, and kisses me again.
I love Gwenna. I am deeply, irrevocably in love with her. And I love her physically—Ineedher physically, I might as well admit—but this…this is something else altogether.
Something I’m not sure I’m equal to.
Her hands are still cold, even through the wool of my sweater. I swallow and grasp them in mine, partly to warm them and partly to push her off me, slightly. The coat and blanket have slid off her shoulders now, and she’s…entirely naked.
