Chapter Eighteen #2
Jasper slapped her back until Thea coughed and spluttered, dredging rancid lake water up from her lungs. ‘What did you do?’ she gasped. ‘You made it disappear . . . What did you pay to do that?’
‘That’s not for you to worry about,’ Jasper said.
The power he’d channelled to just snap those threads; he had to have made a considerable sacrifice.
For her. Something told her he would never forgo a price after his lectures.
Thea’s chest was tight, her throat raw from inhaling cursed lake water.
She couldn’t stop imagining it sloshing around in her stomach, wending its way into her blood.
‘You’ll be fine, you’re safe now.’ Jasper’s hand remained on her back. He began rubbing it in slow circles, coaxing her lungs to relax and fill with air.
She gagged as another mouthful of lake water came up. ‘What was that?’
‘Like I said, magic from other realms, bleeding through,’ Jasper said grimly. ‘Sometimes more than magic slips through. You just met your first lake spirit. Though lake spirit is a nicer term than water demon.’
Thea’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
She couldn’t stop imagining those long, narrow fingers snatching her ankle again, their claw-tips sinking in.
If Jasper hadn’t saved her . . . Remembering the other glittering eyes that had stared at her, she began ploughing through the shallows at speed.
‘Slow down,’ Jasper ordered.
She did not.
Lakeweed tangled around her boot, tripping her.
This time, Jasper was fast enough to grab her arm before the lake claimed her once more.
His hair was pasted to his neck, droplets clinging to his eyelashes.
She raised a hand to one temple, dizzied.
He looked like he’d walked straight from one of her more . . . dangerous dreams of him.
After a long pause, Jasper cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry?’
Had she said that out loud? Thea blushed to the roots of her sodden hair.
‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. Ripping her gaze from his, she gathered up her sopping cloak.
Wringing it out, she stomped through the fingers of frost creeping across the lake’s shallows.
The cold was still sinking through her as if the lake had marked her.
Leaving her feet and fingers numb and unwieldy.
‘You’ve dreamt of me?’
As if caught in a trance, she turned back. He was slowly walking from the lake, his white, wet shirt clinging to him. Revealing a well-defined chest and sculpted lines leading down from his stomach that entrapped her, before she caught herself staring.
‘No, not at all,’ she said in a tone that sounded unnatural to her own ears.
‘That’s not what you just said.’ Jasper strode towards her.
Thea’s legs quivered with more than the cold. ‘They were nothing,’ she said, in that same unnatural tone she couldn’t seem to shake. ‘More like nightmares really.’
‘And what do I do in your nightmares?’ Jasper asked huskily.
‘You, you . . .’ Thea failed to think of a single word. When Jasper swallowed, she tracked the rise and fall of his throat hungrily, feeling the sudden urge to skim her teeth over him.
Jasper’s hand clenched at his side. She watched it, fascinated.
‘Stop that,’ he ordered.
‘I don’t want to,’ she whispered.
‘Tell me what I do in your dreams,’ he whispered back, stealing closer. Close enough to touch, if either of them were brave enough to cross that dangerous line. Again. ‘What do I say to you?’
She closed her eyes, feeling his breath slide over her neck.
‘What do I make you feel?’ he continued. ‘What— Thea, you’re bleeding.’
Her eyes snapped open. Jasper knelt at her feet, brandishing a furious frown as he delicately lifted her left foot onto his knee, his hands wrapping around her calf, lifting her dress to examine her leg.
Her blush turned as furious as his frown.
A thin line of blood wept down her calf.
A shard was lodged there. Jasper plucked it out.
Blood welled. She had barely time to panic before Jasper threw up the tapestry of fate and healed her.
The pain vanished at once. Before she could thank him, he was standing before her.
He gave her the shard. ‘I hope it was worth it.’
It was a fingernail. Storm-grey and veined with green. Thea beamed down at it. ‘I got one!’
‘We are not doing that again. Ever,’ Jasper told her as Thea nodded seriously, attempting not to smile – though now she’d finally be able to make Malek’s key and he could save his sister, and it all felt so good. Like she could do anything if she put her mind to it.
Jasper sighed. With a furtive glance back at the lake, he brought his fingers to his mouth and whistled. His horse came trotting into the clearing, munching on a mouthful of weeds. Jasper patted its mane. ‘Good girl,’ he murmured.
‘What’s her name?’ Thea asked through clattering teeth.
Jasper frowned again, his gaze turning unfocused. The chill soaking into her bones suddenly vanished and her soaking clothes and hair dried. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Her name is Eclipse,’ Jasper told her, mounting his horse. He held a hand out to Thea. ‘Come.’
‘Oh, I can make my own way home,’ she began.
His hand remained extended as he looked down at her, waiting.
‘Fine.’ She gave him her hand. ‘But I’m never going to be able to get up there—’ Jasper gripped her wrist, pulling her up onto the back of the horse before she could worry about it. A soft, ‘Oh,’ escaped her.
Jasper chuckled under his breath.
Thea stared at his back, unsure if she’d really heard him make that sound. ‘You’re entirely too pleased with yourself for someone who just fell into a cursed lake,’ she grumbled, tentatively placing her hands on his waist.
Reaching for her hands, Jasper tugged them hard, making Thea slide up flush against his back, her thighs either side of his legs. She stifled her gulp of surprise, glad he couldn’t see her face, the way she was sure her cheeks had bloomed, her eyes widening as he had pulled her into position.
‘Hold on tight.’
Thea clung on for dear life as Eclipse cantered through the forest, sighing in relief when they’d passed the Crossroads, and that pervasive hum of colliding realms disappeared.
Jasper slowed their gait as they rode beneath a canopy blazing in crimson and burnt orange like a living ember.
A flash of gold snatched Thea’s attention. ‘Stop!’ she cried out.
Jasper halted Eclipse. ‘What is it?’ he asked, sharp with alarm, scanning the forest.
Thea unknit her fingers from their death’s grip on Jasper’s shirt and slid off the side of Eclipse. Her knees buckled and she hit the ground in an undignified heap.
The corner of Jasper’s mouth twitched. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Look.’ Picking herself up and dusting herself down, Thea ran into the little meadow she’d spotted, beaming with late-blooming sunflowers.
Each one as golden as lost treasure. Flinging her arms back, she spun in a circle, giddy with joy.
‘I’ve never seen this many sunflowers before, and out of season, too. ’
Jasper slowly dismounted, watching her with an indecipherable look.
Thea bent to stroke the petals of the nearest sunflower. It wasn’t one of Rose’s; it bore no reaction to her touch. ‘Did you know that sunflowers tilt their faces to the sun?’
‘I did not.’
‘And when it’s an overcast day, they turn their faces to each other instead. Isn’t that the loveliest thing you’ve ever heard?’
‘Lovely indeed,’ Jasper said.
When Thea glanced back at him, he was still watching her, something unreadable on his face. A visible hunger in his eyes. She stood, her fingers falling from the sunflower. Jasper straightened, walking towards her slowly, with purpose, his gaze locked on hers.
Without a single word, she went to him.
They met in a fiery clash in the centre of the meadow.
Thea tilted her head back like she was a sunflower and he the sun, and he took her mouth as if it belonged to him.
As if it was inevitable that they would have continued that kiss in their apothecary days before.
As if they were inevitable. All the anger and frustration and loathing wound up so tightly within Thea spilled out as she tore Jasper’s shirt off, pushing him down onto the long grass, before sitting on his lap and kissing him with that wild hunger ripping through them both.
He unlaced her as expertly as if he was unthreading the fates of the world, shoving her dress, her underclothes down to her waist. ‘Thea,’ he groaned, his gaze more black than blue as his pupils dilated with need.
She wetted her bottom lip, watching him take her in.
Noticing, he groaned again, wrapping his hands around her waist and bending to take a peaked nipple into his mouth.
She melted under his heat, her head tipping back as she surrendered to his touch, her thoughts quieting to a whisper.
When she felt him lick his way across to her other nipple, she reached down for his breeches, suddenly needing to touch him, too.
His mouth fell from her breast with one last, reverent kiss.
‘Are you sure?’ His stare searched hers.
Looking for what, she didn’t know, but she bent to kiss him long and hard and deep, losing herself in a way that felt so right, she wondered why she’d wasted so much time loathing him when they could have been doing this instead.
He responded in kind, his hands skimming up her thighs and higher still, until he found that tight bud at the apex of her thighs and pressed it firmly, making her cry out for him.
She untied him hungrily, bracing a hand on his shoulder as he continued working between her thighs and she eased herself down onto him.
Thea paused, staring wonderingly at him, at how they had ended up here after everything that had raged between them for years.
Then Jasper sighed, whispering, ‘I have been dreaming of this.’ His other arm wrapped around her, supporting her, his thumb stroking her waist. She watched his throat move as he swallowed, his hand steady but tender between her legs, coaxing more heat from her until she felt as if she might die from wanting. Instead, she lost herself in him.
They moved as one until Thea’s hair was a wild tangle.
Until she was clinging onto Jasper’s arms, his muscles tightening and flexing as he moved her with ease when she tired, until their breaths turned ragged and mingled together and she could no longer distinguish where his ended and hers began. Until they came undone as one.
Thea lay back on the blanket of grass, watching as the day waned.
When she sat up, her chest hitched; she was suddenly surrounded with wild flowers.
Crocuses and lilies and delicate little bluebells in the palest purple-blue.
Wild flowers that shouldn’t have risen until spring had awakened, tilting their faces to her as if she was the sun.
And beside her, watching her with the same regard, was Jasper, propped up on one elbow. ‘You’re cold,’ he said.
Thea smiled at him. ‘It was worth it.’
He smiled back at her. It brightened his entire face, until Thea couldn’t look away.
The wild flowers tipping their blooms towards her were wrong; it was Jasper who was the sun.
He just spent most of his days overcast. He plucked a single violet from the bevy of flowers and slid it into Thea’s hair, tucking it above her ear.