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“Are you marrying her?”
Dimitri ‘s fingers interlinked with mine. “Helia and I are still working out the details, but it seems she wants to marry me even less than you.”
He let out a self-deprecating laugh edged with loneliness and old pain. He might not want marriage, but he wanted something.Someone.
He had caught me the first time we met and no matter how we danced, never let go. He saved me when Eki pushed me off the balcony. Again, by rushing me to the hospital no matter who saw.
In the alley during the riot, he killed to keep me safe.
He had all the causes in the world to throw me in prison but did not even threaten it.
And he was not marrying her.
I had sworn not to make the first move, but his kiss had already cracked the walls we built. Life was too fragile to live in fear.
“We don’t know what our clothes touched in the tunnels,” I said with a hand against his chest, feeling its quickening rise and fall. “It would be irresponsible to keep them on.”
“Tempest…”
I moved into his lap, meeting his eyes. They were as strange and beautiful as ever, blue and brown, earnest and imperious.
Everything inside me—music, dancing, running—stopped.
Resting my forehead against his, noses touching, I continued, “You’re arrogant and rash, calculated and cold, passionate and caring, a killer and protector.” I ran my hand along his jaw, stubblerubbing against my fingertips. “I want you even when I shouldn’t. Your touch is the vice I cannot break, the only treat I cannot deny myself. I’m not a princess, but I’m still yours.”
“Vanya.” His tone held a warning. But his hand slid under my heavy hair to rest on my neck, pulling me closer despite himself. “I only have broken pieces to give—I’ll not be free until I can pass my crown to someone else—and perhaps not even then.”
My lips hovered above his. “But you want me?”
“We shouldn’t do this.”
“But you want me?” I pressed, brushing my chest against his with each breath.
The princely mask fractured, eyes consuming me. “More than anything.”
“Then I don’t care.”
We moved at the same time, mouths clashing, hands clenching. Shedding coats and control, we broke away to pull shirts over our heads, ripping buttons. The wound on my arm—a shallow long, thin line—had stopped bleeding.
“Later,” I snapped, and placed his reaching hand over my pounding heart. The cut reminded me how close we had come to never leaving the dark. To never feel this alive again. Caring for it could wait.
I kissed his neck, tasting salt andhim—danger and safety. Forbidden and mine. A jolt stronger than the one I’d gotten from the glass crown woke parts of me I could not ignore. No longer wanted to.
I explored the hard muscles of his chest, allowing my hands to travel down and squeeze, delighting in his hitched breaths, swallowed curses, and hungry eyes.
He tenderly loosened my breasts from my binding undergarments. It should have deepened my breath, but each one came as a gasp when his hands surrounded them and fingers brushed my nipples.
Encouraged by the moan I could not keep inside, his hand traveled down my body. Unable to look away, I watched as he came closer and closer to where I needed him.
When his hand drifted under the waist of my pants, my world narrowed.
I forgot to breathe.
He touched me where only one had before. That had been fumbling, drunk on plum wine and dance in the barge’s storage room.
Dimitri’s reverent hands caressed the past away until I could think of nothing more than getting him out of his remaining clothes. I shuddered as heat clenched inside me.
I was falling and flying. He would always catch me.
