Page 28 of Blood Curse

Her gaze dropped to my mouth.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“Healing.”

“Healing isn’t the same as healed.”

“I carried Adrian without reopening the wound.”

“Lenora carried his feet.”

“A detail she’ll repeat for years.”

“If she thinks you’re about to tear your side open, she’ll repeat it from inside this room.”

“My side is fine. I’m tired, filthy and very aware that we have an audience on the other side of several walls.”

“Do you want sleep?” I asked.

“Eventually.” Her fingers played with the bottom button of my shirt. “I don’t want this to become another test. I don’t want to have sex so we can watch whether the Crown reacts.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then why now?”

“Because I watched you face a room full of frightened vampires and tell them the truth when a lie would have been easier. Because you smiled at me while wearing soot and someone else’s blood. Because I’ve wanted to get you behind this door since you told Mara I was taken.”

Heat replaced the worry in her eyes. “That answer I trust.”

“I’m not trying to prove we’re unchanged,” I said. “We aren’t. I want what still belongs to us.”

“Desire and affection.”

“And your terrible opinion of my medical judgement.”

“That belongs to me completely.”

I moved even closer to her. “I still want you.”

Her breathing changed.

“Do you want me?” I asked.

Bryony caught my shirt in both hands and kissed me.

There was my answer.

I braced my palms against the door without touching her anywhere else. She moved closer.

Her mouth opened under mine. I kissed her slowly while her hands travelled over my chest, careful at the bandage and firm everywhere else.

I lowered one hand. My fingers skimmed her waist, then slid up her back. She arched into the touch and pulled my lower lip between her teeth.

“Still fine?” she murmured.

“Very.”

“That sounded strained.”