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“I just wanted to be your friend,” she says.
Her voice pinches, and she turns away. Sunlight filters through the canvas walls of her tent and glints off the tears caught in her lashes. The air is still cold, but the warmth rising from the wood stove makes it feel almost like home. I close my eyes as a bird cries outside the tent.
This is it, then. The moment before everything changes. I know what I want to say now, just like I knew exactly what I was going to say to Shenarah’s family in the Crystal City.
Only this time, I also know what it’s like to fail. I’ve carried that knowledge inside for decades, hard and sharp and buried under layers of illusion. I know exactly how it feels to be rejected, to have my life shattered.
But, hells. It’s not like I’m living much of a life anyway. Aloserin had a point, damn it; I might as well give her the chance to reject me. I take a deep breath, then reach forward and let my hand rest on Alindra’s. Her skin is warm beneath my touch; her pulse flutters like a butterfly against my thumb. She shivers as I rub my fingers across her wrist.
“Alindra,” I begin. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
Her mouth drops open. Voids help me, I want to kiss her so badly it hurts.
“I want to share your life,” I say. “I want to be a father to your child. All the nights, and all the mornings, I want to be with you. I want us to be a family. But—”
She makes a small, soft little noise. I glance down at my ruined right side.
“I can’t hold an illusion over this mess my whole life,” I say. “This is all I have to offer. I’m… not what I used to be. And you need to know it.”
My voice catches at the end, making the words come out jagged. My chest feels hollow. All that I have to offer seems like very, very little.
There’s a scraping sound as Alindra pushes her chair back, then the swish of her skirts as she walks around the table toward me. My throat feels tight. She bends down, and before I can say anything, her fingers brush the ruins of my right shoulder.
Her touch sings through my body, blowing my thoughts apart. I close my eyes as her hand trails down my side, weaving through the scar tissue, and by all the screams and whispers of the void, I had no idea this would ever feel so damned good.
“Phaedron,” she whispers. “You came through a portal into my bedroom.”
Her hand reaches the waistband of my pants, and my cock beats like a drum against the lacing of my pants. I sink my teeth into my lower lip to keep from groaning as her fingers brush the leather of my pants, then begin to trail upward, skimming the ridges of all the places where my body was pulled back together.
“We snuck into the Towers of the Silver City,” she says, leaning so close that I feel her breath on my neck. “We freed an old god.”
Her hair trails down my shoulder, and then her lips brush my neck. My heart beats against my chest like it’s trying to escape.
“Stars, Phaedron,” she whispers against my neck. “We found your brother. We faced down Rensivar the Wicked.”
Her lips touch my neck again, lower. Then again.
And then she kisses my shoulder, where the scars are so sensitive they ache even against the brush of silk. I shift on the chair, trying to hide what my cock is doing to my pants, but I can’t stop the groan that slips out of my lips.
Alindra’s fingers brush my chin, tugging my face toward hers. Our eyes meet and, stars help me, I’m drowning. I’m so utterly fucked. She could say anything right now, ask me for anything, and I’d give it. I’d give it with all my heart and whatever’s left of the rest of me.
Alindra smiles. “Did you really think you could scare me by taking off your shirt?” she asks.
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but she kisses me instead. Some distant, numb part of my mind wonders if this is a yes as her tongue traces my lips and her fingers drop to explore the ruined side of my body, burning me as they go, and voids, my whole body is hissing, screaming.
Screaming. Alindra breaks our kiss, then spins away, and it’s only after she pulls the kettle from the fire that I realize it was the teakettle screaming and not my fucking cock. I shift and lean forward, as if there were any way to disguise the tent that’s suddenly appeared in my crotch. When I look back up, Alindra is untying the laces of her bodice.
Oh, hells.
The laces come undone. She smiles at me like the fox who stole the moon as her dress slides down her shoulders. Sunlight kisses her dark skin, the curve of her belly, and the hard nipples that swell from the most perfect breasts in either of our worlds. I brace my hand against my chair as my cock screams at me.
“Y-You’re going to kill me,” I manage to stammer.
Alindra shrugs as she steps out of the tangle of fabric that used to be a dress. She’s wearing a tiny, tight pair of white shorts, and that little slip of bright cloth against her skin has to be the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
“It’s hardly fair for you to be the only one topless,” she says. “Tea?”
I push up from the chair, grab her waist, and spin her hips against mine.
