Page 240 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

We stood there, holding each other and trying to catch our breaths—with him still inside of me. “Kilian, you will have to do that all over again if you stay inside me a second longer.”

He kissed me again—hard. “It doesn’t sound like a complaint on your behalf.”

“Twas a warning,” I said, nibbling on his lips.

He chuckled, rolling us to the side and gathering me to his chest.

“I want to see you,” I said, and at his command, darkness dispersed back to reveal a soft navy hued night filtering through the room.

When I looked up at him, he’d closed his eyes and had a little smile playing on his mouth. “Let's have a bath and we can do that again.”

He bit that plump lip of his and said, “Let me relish it, woman. I want to remember every detail of that—of you.” He kissed my brow and sighed. “You haunt me, woman. You always will—you’ve been haunting me for fifteen years and I am still consumed just by the thought of you.” His fingers played with my hair, and I sighed from the overwhelm of senses—the overwhelm of his words, the closeness, the caress. “I’ll take that you’ve missed me as well.”

“How would one come to such a conclusion?” I asked, sliding my palms down his body, muscles twitching under my touch.

“Keep doing that and we won’t make it to the bath.”

“That sounded like a proper threat.”

He rolled me onto my back and caged me under him again, reaching a hand between us and over my entrance, spreading his release all over my sex before sliding inside me again. He took me again, almost hungrier than the first time. And just before we’d agreed to head for the bath, he took me a third time—slower, our bodies moulded to one another, his eyes never once leaving mine, soft touches, savouring kisses and low sighs.

The muscle ache was combined with a strange bliss, and the sweet scented, steaming bath water had turned me into a complete puddle of bones and flesh as Kilian held me between his parted knees, my head resting on his chest.

The two of us were silent for a long moment before he said, “What?”

“Nothing.” I wished. I wished his father hadn’t died and that my own would have agreed to the marriage proposal. I wished to have seen him, stolen glances at him when he would come to Tenebrose to meet my father. I wished that he, too, would have stolen glances of me. I wished I had remembered why grey was my favourite colour. I wished he’d known that I loved that colour because of him. I wished that once I’d been old enough, I would have married him. I wished.

Then all of the sudden those feigned memories I’d never lived dulled and dimmed when I remembered what he did not know of the girl he’d met at Urinthia’s coronation or saw in passing in Arynth. How I was behind doors and before mirrors. How there was no life in me. How much he would have hated that girl.

“I’ve lost you again,” he said, running a finger down the bridge of my nose.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been found, Kilian.”

“Then let me find you.”

Only so I could be lost again? Silence rang for a moment. “Why do you like me?”

“Like?” he asked, lifting my chin with a finger. “I liked you once when I was a boy and I like many things about you, loads—so many. But I love you. What I feel for you has surpassed like a long while ago now.”

He loved me.

Right after he made me scream all shades of pleasure, he’d gotten dressed to attend a meeting. Leaving me alone and bored in his room with a promise for more when he returned.

A glint of silver caught my eye on his table and utter boredom made me shoot to my feet and pick up the heavy king chess piece. Except it was not a chess piece. The bottom had his royal seal. A crescent moon with vines and a dagger going through it. I knew it too well. I’d seen this mark plastered on ten different documents retrieved from the Adriatian men after the attack in Tenebrose. It struck me hard—the memory and my actions. My mother, my siblings, that night—him. And then came the convincing that it was all but pretend. It was all it was—pretend. For a little while we were playing a game of forgetting. Only a little while longer.

Just a little while…I wanted to have him just a little longer.

As I set the seal down, my attention caught on the last document Kilian had used the seal on. Not on the words. On the signature. Kilian Castemont.

With a finger, I pushed the paper back to reveal the other under it. Another signed document with an identical signature. My heartbeat grew erratic as I flipped through all the papers on his table one after the other.

Kilian Castemont. Kilian Castemont. Kilian Castemont.

My world swayed for a moment before I rested a hand on the shelf to balance myself. No, I was making this up. My head had to be making it up.

I stopped, picked a document up and traced a trembling finger over the curves of his name. Over and over and over till the pad of my finger was sore and the paper felt too coarse against my skin.

He hates that name. He never uses that name, Mal’s words floated around the room.