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I haven’t kissed anyone at all in a long time, but I think the moment would feel miraculous regardless.
So much about this woman is tough and unyielding, but her lips are perfectly soft against mine, sweet from the pastry she just ate. The heat of her floods me from the meeting of our lips and her hand at my neck all the way down my body.
I want to drown in the sensation.
My pulse races madly with the giddying thrill of the embrace. How is this even possible?
I don’t know, but all I can do is kiss her back and slide my arms around her slim frame. Pull her closer against me.
Through the heady rush, the memory rises up of seeing her emerging into the archive room with Casimir at her heels. Of the jolt of a different hot emotion that shot through me at the sight of their flushed faces and her rumpled dress.
A stab of jealousy, a searing impulse to protest that she wasmine, and a dull burn beneath that tempered the other two reactions with the knowledge that of course she wouldn’t want me that way.
But she does. By some miracle, she came to me. For at least the space of this kiss, she’s mine after all.
Her fingers tease up my neck to my jaw, her thumb brushing the lower edge of my mask, and reality comes crashing in with a lurch of my gut.
She isn’t really mine, not in any way that counts. I can’t say she’s picked me when she doesn’t even know who I am.
Imagining the recrimination that would appear on her face makes me recoil. I pull back even though it feels like a piece of me breaks putting that distance between us.
Ivy stares at me, her cheeks flushed for me now, with the same ruddy tint that laces her hair. Her lips part, and then something shifts in her sky-blue eyes. Her body starts to tense.
As if she’s bracing herself. I’ve seen that reaction before.
I knowherwell enough now to recognize what it means. Buried deep inside the fierce, resourceful woman who captivates me is the girl whose mother starved and beat her, who fled to the streets of the outer wards rather than risk catching the attention of the gods.
And I’m catching a glimpse of that wounded girl in those doubtful eyes.
“No,” I say hastily, grasping her shoulder. Trying not to let the soft warmth of the skin at the edge of her neckline divert me from my purpose. “I’m not stopping because of you. Gods help me, there isn’t a single thing about you that I don’t want.”
She lets out a rough laugh. “Not a single thing? Somehow that’s a little hard to believe. There are at least a few things about meIdon’t even want.”
I swallow thickly. I don’t know how to tell her in a way she’ll accept that her being riven has only made me more sure of how incredible she is.
Maybe once she knows what I really am, it’ll make sense to her. Even if that means she wants nothing at all to do with me.
I keep my voice as even as I can. “That might be so, but I know what those things are. I know what you’ve done and who you are. But you… you have no idea how much I have to be ashamed of.”
Ivy’s forehead furrows. “You don’t need to give me a list of all your wrongdoings. Everyone’s made mistakes.”
My chuckle sounds hollow even to me. “Not like mine. I—I can’t feel right about this unless we’re on level ground, aware of exactly who we’re both welcoming.” Whether she will still welcome my embrace afterward or not.
I pause. “Unless you’d rather end things here without—”
“No,” Ivy interrupts, soft but firm.
Her gaze searches mine. She lifts her hand to rest it over mine on her shoulder, giving my fingers a quick squeeze that just about unravels me. “If you feel like you have to tell me, you can tell me.”
All at once, my stomach is churning. But I asked for this—I practically demanded it.
I’ve tried so hard to only look forward. To plaster over every bit of my past failings so nothing matters but what I’ve done since.
But if there’s even the slightest chance she’d kiss me again even after she knows, dredging up my shame is worth it.
I glance over at the gilded table. “You might want to sit down. It’s a bit of a long story.”
As I let go of her shoulder, Ivy follows my gaze. She walks back to the table, but rather than take one of the chairs, she hops up to perch on the edge of the tabletop itself.
