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“Are you okay?” he rumbles.
“No.” When I shake my head, the grass tickles my swollen lip. “No, I’m not even close to okay.”
I hear him sigh. His scent intensifies as he bends down and scoops me up in his arms. I’d protest, but what’s the use? He wouldn’t listen. It wouldn’t matter.
He walks me to the huge oak that stands sentinel in the corner of the garden. He sets me down on the far side, where we can’t see the house anymore. Where it’s just water and grass and the darkening night sky. Over here, it almost feels like we’re in a different place altogether. Like we left reality in the gardens at our back.
He settles me against the trunk, then squats down to examine my ankle. “It’s a mild sprain. You’ll be fine.”
“I deserve worse.”
He glances at me. “Have you always been this hard on yourself?” His fingers make tender circles around my ankle. As non-invasive as his touch is right now, it still feels like too much. Too intimate, too…comforting. A comfort I don’t deserve and can’t let myself sink into.
“Please stop,” I whisper.
He looks at me, but he doesn’t stop touching me. “Stop what?”
“That,” I say. “This. All of it. Helping me… Touching me…”
He withdraws his fingers from my calf. But my relief is short-lived when he slides in next to me. Our shoulders knock against one another as he exhales softly. “You feel guilty?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
It’s ironic how uncloudy those misty blue eyes are right now. “No,” he says.
And then he kisses me.
56
TAYLOR
I don’t know what’s happening. I can feel him, I’m aware of what he’s doing, but I don’t reallyknow.
Until I smell him.
Then the world blooms into color.
My stomach quivers and my eyes close, and I melt into him. I don’t question or struggle. My mind has been wiped blank and everything boils down to a choice that’s so stupidly obvious that I don’t even know why I’d bother asking it in the first place:to kiss back or not?
It’s a yes, to say the least. It’s a yes from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. From the whisper of my breath to the deepest, darkest parts of me.
And as long as I’m united behind this yes, it feels okay. If I can cling to that yes for a little while longer, I can enjoy it more. I can take a little more before I have to give Ilarion Zakharov back to where he truly belongs.
His tongue tangles with mine as his lips move, soft and tender. He has one hand cupped against my cheek, and it’s like he’s the last thing keeping me upright when the whole damn universe is trying to drag me down into the dirt.
It’s everything I need.
Which, in the end, is exactly why I have to push away.
It’s not far. Just far enough to break the kiss. I’m not strong enough to do much more than that.
Ilarion looks at me with burning eyes. Everything I’m on fire with is blazing inside of him, too. I don’t even have to ask to know that that’s true.
“I want you,tigrionok.” His hand drops to my hip. “I’m so fucking tired of denying it.”
How easy it would be to sink into those words. To forget all the reasons to run and cling to the one reason to stay right here.
But I can’t.
