“I didn’t know a place like this could exist,” she says.
I sit beside her. The bed adjusts beneath me.
Her hand finds mine between us, and the stone beneath us responds with a single low vibration.
She leans against my shoulder.
She turns her face up to mine. The light off the walls moves across her face. The crescent at her chest pulses bright beneath the fabric, and the answering pulse runs across my own.
Her ring presses into my palm. I lift her hand. Bring her knuckles to my mouth. The ring against my lips. She watches me do it. Her pulse accelerates.
Her free hand comes to my cheek. Her thumb at the corner of my mouth. She turns my face toward her.
Her mouth meets mine. My hand fists in the fabric at her hip.
The kiss is not careful. This is need.
She turns into me, her knee coming up onto the bed, her body folding into mine. Her hand slides up the back of my neck and into my hair. Her teeth catch my lower lip.
The mark on my chest goes hot beneath my shirt.
The walls brighten. The fabric on the bed ripples without being touched.
The wall opens.
A passage appears, half the size of the entrance archway, the edges bright with fresh gold. Beyond it, a corridor descends, curving left, lit by the stone’s own glow.
Seraphina stands in the new opening. Mira beside her.
“Really, Uncle Max?”
Celeste laughs quietly against my mouth. The sound goes into me before she pulls back.
She does not turn her head toward the doorway. Her hand is still in my hair. Her breath is uneven.
“Later,” she says. Quiet. To me only.
“Later.” I close my hand over hers where it rests against my chest.
She lowers her knee from the bed. Turns to face them.
I look at Mira over the top of Celeste’s head.
“The mountain could have given a little warning,” I say.
“I doubt you would’ve noticed if it did,” she retorts.
Seraphina’s mouth does the thing it does when she is trying not to smile. She doesn’t succeed.
“Lanthar is waiting,” she says. The smile gets more visible. “He has waited three hundred years. I imagine he can wait three more minutes.”
Celeste’s mouth comes to my ear.
“I need a lot more than three minutes to do what I want to do to you,” she whispers. “So this will definitely have to wait.”
Heat moves through me like a wildfire.
She pulls back. Adjusts the front of her shirt. Walks toward the passage without looking back at me.
