Chapter Twenty-Three #2
I pushed my hair out of my face. This was more complex thaumaturgical theory than any I’d learned, but I believed him. Yet…“If we completed the betrothal, will it be harder to dismantle?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“How hard?”
“It could take…years.”
Good lord. “You might be stuck with me for ages.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. How noble of him. He’d strengthen the betrothal if it meant saving the world.
“We’d be saving the Ziz,” he said gently. “And Ena-Cinnai.”
I swallowed through my tight throat. How self-sacrificing.
“It’s a moot point.” I gazed out at the Lersach. All the winds were here except the Maestril, the Trio Winds churning the river into a frenzy, the rare Corisoc blowing as though it never intended to stop. “The Sanhedrin will supply us with the neshem.”
He stepped closer, careful on the slippery rocks. Paz crept up onto his shoulder and cheeped a warning. “If they don’t?”
“We worry about it then.”
“Naomi.” His eyes, his voice were searing. “If they don’t?”
I bit my lip, feeling sick. What could I say? You didn’t put your happiness over the needs of many. “We’d be trapped together.”
“Is that how you feel?” He maneuvered even closer. “Trapped?”
“You don’t want to be betrothed to me.” I smiled bitterly. “I’m a means to an end.”
He watched me. “You started as a means to an end. You did not stay one.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I mean it.” His voice was fierce.
His gaze locked on to mine. “Naomi, I don’t think I’d be trapped with you.
I want this betrothal. I’m sorry I lied, I know you might hate me, but I want you so absolutely.
Completing the betrothal wouldn’t only be for the binding. I’d do it because I want you.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to more than anything in the world.
“I think you want me too,” he said, his voice hoarse.
This was too much. He’d broken my heart, and I didn’t know how to put it back together. “You lied to me. I should hate you.”
He caught my hands and held them between us.
We were so close, our bodies inches apart, breathing hard out of anger and hurt and banked desire.
The wind whipped around us, pulling at our hair, pushing us closer.
I had to cling to him for stability, and the burning in me shifted and bent into a different kind of heat.
He brought his face closer to mine, his eyes searching. “Do you hate me?”
What I felt for him was so far from hate it almost circled back to it—it had the same strength, the same intensity. But it wasn’t hate at all. “No,” I whispered. “But you hurt me.”
He slid his hand up my cheek, cupping my face. “How can I make it up to you?”
I didn’t know—I’d never needed to forgive anyone to the extent I did Daziel. But I wanted to forgive him. I wanted to be with him.
“Prove you care.” That was what I needed: for Daziel to show me he hadn’t only been using me and I was more than a pawn in his elaborate plan. I needed him to make me believe he wanted me, over and over again, until my trust healed. “Prove it wasn’t a lie.”
“I do care,” he said. “I’ll keep proving it as long as you need me to.”
I leaned into him, all yearning and craving and hot need.
He slid his hand around my neck, lowering his lips to mine.
He kissed me, a drugging, intoxicating kiss I fell into with my whole body.
Heat slipped through me, winding its way with licks of fire that left me gasping.
Kissing Daziel was like fire, like a storm, like ravenous hunger. I didn’t want to stop.
He was the one who finally did, leaning his forehead against mine. “I’m sorry I lied. I’ll never lie to you again.”
I let out a half-choked laugh. “That’s a really sweeping promise to make.”
“Right.” He considered it. “I will never lie to you on purpose? I will…make a concerted effort to be honest.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “I liked the no lying at all.”
He started pulling his signet ring off his finger, but I covered his hand with my own and stilled it. “We’ll wait until after the Sanhedrin answers. Then…we’ll see.”
He nodded and gazed up at the sky. The clouds had blown in, low and dark and gray, heavy with rain. “We should go back before it pours.”
We did, hands gripped tightly. I kept replaying his words, his touch.
I want you, he’d said. He meant it, I had no doubt.
His face as he spoke had burned itself into my mind, the perfect beauty of his eyes, the worried furrow in his brow.
The heat of his body, the passion, the yearning spread beneath my skin.
But my aunt’s voice: What do you think would happen if you, a human girl, married a high shayd?
He wanted me, but did he want to marry me? Did I want to marry him?
Yes, a tiny whisper said deep inside me. Because you love him.
I shut that little whisper up far away. The end of the world was not the right time to think about love.
~ ~ ~
That evening, after a wretchedly exhausting day, we returned to my aunt’s.
As we brushed our teeth and washed our faces and put on our pajamas, nervous energy writhed through me.
I was overly aware of each movement Daziel made.
Curled upright in the massive bed, the privacy curtains tied to the posts, I watched Daziel gracefully sit in his nest of blankets.
Feeling both excruciatingly shy and wildly bold, I burst out, “Do you want to join me?”
Daziel froze. “What?”
My cheeks were hot enough to scramble eggs. “Not if you don’t want. But. You know. You can. Sleep in the bed.”
“Really.”
I nodded, so many times and so rapidly I almost pulled a muscle in my neck. Also, I probably looked like a wild marionette doll. I stilled, wincing. “I just thought—I don’t know. It might be more comfortable.”
“Right.” He studied me with a burning intensity, as though trying to read me from the inside out. “Are you sure?”
I felt like I’d swallowed a butterfly and it was trying to escape my throat, wings beating a frantic, terrified tempo inside me. “Uh-huh.”
His mouth curved up in a smile. “You don’t sound very sure.”
“I am sure.” The words scraped out past frozen lips. What if he turned me down? That, I realized, was what had me so terrified—the idea that he wouldn’t want to sleep beside me, when I wanted it more than anything else in the world. “Very, very sure.”
“All right.” He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight shifting the mattress. He swung his legs up and under the covers, and I lay very still and flat, afraid if I looked at him, I wouldn’t be able to look away. He settled in, rustling among the blankets, rearranging the pillow.
We lay side by side, all my attention focused on the scant inches between us, and how earlier today there had been none.
I tried to breathe deeply and pretend I wasn’t thinking about the exact arrangement of Daziel’s body and how badly I wanted to roll into his side and press my mouth to his and fill all the places in me that felt empty.
Okay. Screw it. I turned on my side. Daziel already faced me. His eyes gleamed, like black paint yet to dry. It was easier to talk in the dark, with no light except the sliver of moon and spill of starlight. “You tried not to kiss me. The night after the Rocks. You held back.”
“I thought if we started being physical and then you found out I’d lied to you, you’d hate me.”
“Oh.” Fair point. I frowned. “Why did you change your mind?”
He managed a mangled smile. “I wanted to be with you too badly.”
A curl of warmth expanded in my stomach, something tender and shy and hopeful. I flopped back on my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut. “Why?”
I could hear his smile in his voice. “Because I like you.”
I believed him, but I still wasn’t completely relaxed. I wasn’t completely sure of him. “Why?” I asked again.
The mattress shifted, and his fingertips—light as a feather—brushed the side of my face.
“I like your combination of prickly and sweet. You don’t like to say nice things, but you do nice things.
You stock the food I like and plan things I like.
You try to protect me when you think people aren’t being fair.
And I like how you think about what’s right and just, and it matters to you.
You’re invested in your friends and family.
You’re hardworking, and I find your perseverance and dedication incredible. ”
My stomach swooped, in a dizzying, heady way, and I felt like I might cry. I hadn’t realized how moving I’d find it, how validating, to have him say this. These were things I liked about myself. I opened my eyes.
He watched me tenderly. “I think you’re very brave to not have stonewalled me when I told you everything. That would have been reasonable. But you didn’t. You went forward because you understood how important saving the Ziz is. That must have been hard.”
I nodded. “This is true.”
He traced my cheekbone, my brow, my ear. I didn’t move for fear he’d stop. “Also, you’re very beautiful.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Now you’re just buttering me up.”
“Eyes like polished wood.” His voice was soft and teasing, but I could hear the earnestness in it. “Long ink-black lashes.” He raised a finger to brush my bottom lip, soft as a butterfly’s wing. “Perfect lips.”
I closed my eyes, bright red.
I could hear the grin in his voice. “Have I embarrassed you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m being honest. Look at me.” He waited until our eyes were locked together. “You’re stunning.”
A tightness in my chest unlocked. “Will you kiss me?”
He barely had to move to bring his mouth to mine.
It was different kissing like this than the other times.
There were fewer barriers here: no one to perform decency for, no need to stay upright.
We were in our own world, where only sensation and heart existed, and I could tell how easy it would be to let it consume me.