Page 96 of The Immortal’s Mark

“What?”

“The last word.”

I should deflect. Make a joke. Retreat behind the armor that’s kept me alive for eight hundred years. That’s the smart play. The safe play. The Lián play.

“Wife,” I say instead.

Something in his face cracks open.

“Again.”

“I’m not going to keep—”

“Please.”

I’ve never heard him say please.

Not to his advisors. Not to his guards. Not to the ancient dragon currently living in his pocket who has been offering unsolicited opinions about his life for two decades. Please isn’t a word that emperors use. It implies asking, and emperors don’t ask. They command, they decree, they pronounce. They hold the Mandate of Heaven and the fire of dragons and the weight of a thousand years of empire.

They don’t say please.

He’s saying please.

His eyes are dark. Darker than usual. There’s something raw in them, something stripped of all the careful control I’ve watched him maintain since the moment I met him. Like I’ve found a crack in the wall that’s been holding him together and reached inside and touched something he’s never shown anyone.

“Wife,” I whisper.

He kisses me before I can say anything else.

It’s not graceful. Not planned. Not anything like the careful first kisses in the stories I’ve read—and I’ve read a lot of stories, waiting for stories to be over, hoping the next chapter would be different. His hands come up to frame my face—careful, desperate, like he doesn’t quite believe I’m letting him—and he kisses me like he’s been waiting eight hundred years for permission.

Maybe he has been.

Maybe we both have.

I freeze. One heartbeat. Two. The world narrows to the pressure of his lips, the warmth of his hands, the impossible reality of this is happening, this is actually happening—

Then my hands fist in his collar—force of habit, except this time I’m pulling him closer instead of trying to snap his neck—and I kiss him back like I’ve forgotten how to breathe and don’t care.

He tastes like green onions and urgency and something underneath that’s just him.

My back hits something—a stall post, maybe, I don’t know, the whole world has narrowed to the heat of his mouth and the pressure of his hands and the way he’s making a sound in the back of his throat that’s doing terrible things to my composure. His fingers slide into my hair. My hands are still fisted in his collar. Neither of us seems capable of letting go.

Somewhere, distantly, I’m aware that we’re in public. That there are people. That this is extremely unwise for approximately seventy different reasons.

I don’t care.

“Finally.” Tianlong’s voice cuts through the haze like cold water, dry and ancient and impossibly smug. “I was beginning to lose faith in both of you. Three thousand years I have observed humanity. This has been the most exhausting courtship I have ever witnessed.”

We break apart. Breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine—an intimacy somehow more devastating than the kiss itself. His thumb traces my cheekbone—just once, just barely—and even that small touch sends sparks cascading down my spine.

“Well,” I manage. My voice sounds like someone else’s. Someone who hasn’t spent eight centuries building walls. “That complicates things.”

“Does it?”

“We still have to share a room.” I swallow. Try to find something like equilibrium. Fail completely. “For two more weeks. Pretending to be married.”

The implication lands between us, heavy and inevitable. Two weeks. One room. One bed. And now this.