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“I called it the Auriel,” I finally said. He needed to know how much what he did mattered to me. “I watched it every night before sleep. It was the only way I could sleep, really. When it disappeared, and you came for me…I thought I had nothing left. I was going to…” My lips wobbled and the words fell away from me.
“I know,” Kalen said quietly, turning from the banister to pull me into his arms. I put my chin on his chest, needing to see him.
“It never disappeared.”
“No, it didn’t,” he said, cupping my face in his hand and rubbing small lines down my cheek. “I had no clue you even knew I was doing it. When I found you on that mountain and then you decided to jump rather than face me, I...” he laughed despite himself. “I’m just really glad I caught you.”
I laughed back, and snot fell to the bow of my lip. Kalen made a face and then offered me his sleeve. I took it, looking up at him sheepishly, and cleaned my face. Taking his arm back, Kalen scraped his shirt against the railing before wrapping himself back around me.
“How did you know?” I asked, leaning into his warmth as we both watched the sky. “How did you know I loved the birds? Andthe fish in my brook?”
“I didn’t,” he replied, and I frowned.
“It was from a poem you used to read,” he explained, “It always stuck with me.”
“For what are the birds and the fish if not dreamers.”
Both of our voices tangled in a sweet monotony and like a spell, Kalen’s Light shot back into the sky, a glittering halo around his face as he projected chirping birds of green and gold, leaping fish of blue.
The Auriel danced along the sky and a piece of my soul fell into place. I didn’t need to search for its meaning. I loved Kalen a lifetime ago and no time or space that we travelled without each other would be enough to stop me from loving him again. I did love him. Maybe more than I had before, even with less of a mind than when I’d first fallen for him. That was the thing. You don’t need to know yourself to be capable of love. Sometimes, loving someone else teaches you who you are.
Right now, with Kalen’s arms around my waist, I didn’t care if I was bad or good. If wanting him was weak or if loving him was wrong. Let the whole world fall to the Shadows.
I’d been dead before.
I pulled Kalen’s face to mine. The Auriel disappeared, and I laughed at the confusion in the bend of his mouth when I kissed him.
For the first time, possibly ever in my two lives, I was unafraid.
Never breaking a kiss.Never pulling up for air. This was how I’d spend eternity if I had the choice. Nothing less could ever be enough, and anything more would make me beg for endless damnation with him by my side. The perfect dream of death looped in my mind as Kalen led us through the door of my room, my legs wrapped around his waist and his hands pressing me against his body.
Kalen laid me gently onto the bed as he had on many nights since our stay in Grovsney, but this felt different. The weight of my chest pressed down on me as it hadn’t before. My throat felt dry and my blood thumped loudly in my ears, rushing as he raised to pull his shirt from his body. As his calloused hands roughly discarded my dress, my brain fell into a frenzy.
His mouth returned, this time to my neck, and my eyes fluttered shut when his kiss mauled passionately down my throat. Kalen traveled across the soft skin of my shoulder, then dropped down towards my navel, only stopping to kiss and suck and nip at my breasts. I couldn’t stop the sounds slipping out from behind my lips, as embarrassingly needy as they were. My heart pounded excruciatingly beneath my ribs, the adrenaline it pumped doing nothing to tamper the nerves racketing through my entire body.
He had kissed me like this before, I tried to remind myself. Had sent trails of fire to the center of my hips with not so much as one moment’s glance. Unraveled me with his hands and his mouth over and over again.
But that was all before.
Now I could understand clearly why he’d kept himself fromme. It was terrifying, letting him wander every inch of my body knowing he craved the girl he thought I still was. The scars I had shown him which looked valiant and well-earned on the Guardian, may turn out to be dull and unappealing in the light of this moon. It was all too much—the feeling of wanting him inside my very bones while hoping he’d come to his senses and stay as far away as possible.
I placed a hand flat against his shoulder, halting his mouth as it reached the curve of my hip bones. Kalen looked up, ready to do whatever I asked of him. The sentiment made my heart ache. Lifting him gently by the nape of his neck, I took his mouth with mine and rolled on top of him.
“Gwyn,” Kalen stuttered, but I cut him off. He had days and weeks and years of being my best friend. All I had was tonight.
“Better than anyone,” I whispered against the curve of his jaw and imprinted the words there with a kiss. All the while my hand raked down to the sharp lines that carved out his lower stomach. He hissed as my fingers, cold in comparison, traced slow circles on the hot skin just below his pant line.
I took him in my hand, ignoring the tremor that raked down my fingers, burying my face into his shoulder, kissing him to hide the shake of my lungs as I moved between his thighs.
Kalen let out a throaty moan and I wanted to listen to that sound forever. I lowered my mouth to his, not to kiss, but to bite. He grunted as my teeth sank into his bottom lip, pulling it back slightly with a snap.
“Does that sound mean it’s good?” I laughed.
He was still watching me, and as I swept my thumb over him, he cursed, planting his hand against his heart. “If it got any better I think I’d die.”
“I’m going to kiss you now, Kalen,” I said, and his brow bent downward, confused as his lips left mine. I bent down, mouth traipsing over his hip bones, planting teasing kisses on the sharplines that carved out his groin. I bit down lightly on the soft skin underneath, then glanced up at him as my mouth hovered above the one place he desired. “Can I?”
“Yes,” he said, watching me as I slid my tongue against him, taking him fully. With every movement of my mouth and stroke of my hand, the muscles on Kalen’s stomach grew more taut. I dug my nails into them. The feeling of him coming apart because of me was too intoxicating not to be pleasurable. Kalen’s hand wound itself into my hair, and I moaned. Then, with a sudden breathlessness, Kalen pulled himself from me, and flipped us over.
