Chapter Twenty-Three
He kisses the gasp from my lips as he knots his hand in my hair, pulling my head to him so he can claim my mouth.
I wrap my arms around his neck as he reaches his other hand in my dress, kneading his fingers into the small of my back. The kiss is deep, relentless. Searing. He tastes of wine and honey, of longing and lost control, of sunlight and the warmth of a candle’s glow.
I kiss him back with equal desperation, with darkness and forbidden desire and damnation, with an aching need for the one thing I can’t have.
His lips take each of mine one by one, sucking and pulling at them, memorizing each of them, the feel, the taste, as he reaches lower and pulls me closer to him by my hips.
I fling the laurel crown from my head and then clutch at his collar, tugging on it, needing him closer.
Testing me, he darts his tongue between my lips.
I open for him. I let him in, meeting his tongue with mine, letting him explore my mouth.
The thrust of his tongue between my lips sends a wave of heat down my spine.
It pinches my nipples, leaving them hard and needy against the smooth silk fabric of the dress he gave me.
I reach my hands into his perfect, golden-brown hair, relishing its softness, my fingertips grazing his crown. And then I press them at the nape of his neck. I urge him deeper into my mouth, and he gives me what I want, opening himself into me, devouring my tongue.
I lower the shadows around us. Not so much that he can’t see me, but enough that we shouldn’t be visible from inside.
My breasts are heavy and hot against him. I want him to touch them, to taste them. “Is this what you want?” he asks, kissing my neck and reaching a hand up between us, grazing my breast, touching the peak of my nipple with agonizing softness through the white fabric.
“More,” I beg.
He takes my mouth again, his lips warm and wet against mine. “Greedy,” he whispers. My nipples ache with need. He touches one lightly again and then gives it one soft squeeze.
I groan in frustration.
Fuck. He’s teasing me, and I love it.
And from the feel of him hard against my stomach, he loves it too.
He kisses me again, harder now, more insistent, as he reaches lower still and lifts my thigh to his hip. I wrap my leg around his back, angling myself so that I’m pressing my most sensitive area against his length. The layers of fabric between us are thin, and I’m wet already with desire.
“Fuck,” he says, moaning into my ear. He licks the shell of it and sucks on the lobe, teasing my nipple with one hand as he presses the other onto my ass, pushing me to him until I’m rubbing the soaking flesh between my thighs against him.
White hot desire floods me. I want to shove the layers of fabric aside. I want to free his cock, to feel the head of it against me—
—to lift her by her hips and lower her onto me, sinking myself all the way inside of her until I’m drowning in her—
What the fuck?
“What was that?” I say, lowering my leg and pulling away from him.
My heart thunders in my chest. I feel the cold absence of him again as he releases me, confused.
“What’s wrong? Fuck, Sylvie, I’m sorry—”
He covers his face with his hand, shocked. Ashamed.
“No,” I say, taking his hand and pulling it from his face. “It’s not that.” I kiss his hand, and he melts into me with relief. It wasn’t the kiss that was the problem. “Did you make me feel something?”
I felt something just a moment ago. It was a feeling, clear and present as my own, but it wasn’t mine.
It was his.
I felt it coming from him, felt his desperate desire for me. Felt what he wanted to do to me, how he wanted to take me. I couldn’t hear his thoughts or see an image, but I knew exactly what he wanted.
I knew it like the feeling had come from my own body instead.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “What did you feel?”
“You. I felt what you wanted. Did you do that?”
He looks at me as if I’m speaking another language. “Did I do what? Did I want you? Yes, very much—”
“No,” I say, sighing in exasperation. “I felt your feelings. Your power. Can you give it to someone else? Can you make them feel things? I thought you said you couldn’t.”
“I can’t,” he says. He’s looking at me with wide-eyed earnestness, and I can tell he’s telling the truth. At least, what he believes to be the truth. “Are you sure you felt my feelings? I know you’re feeling conflicted. Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that. If you felt something and then regretted it—”
“No,” I say firmly. I reach my hand behind his neck, and he shudders at my touch. “It wasn’t regret. I don’t regret it.” I plant a small kiss on his lips, and he freezes, fighting the urge to reach for me again. “It wasn’t my own feeling at all. I’m certain, Ronan.”
He knits his eyebrows, trying to find another explanation for what I’m saying. “What did you feel?” he says in a small voice. He’s nervous. Exposed. Afraid of what he showed me.
“I felt…”
I don’t know if I can say it. If I say it, I’m going to need it. I’m going to need him inside me more than I already do.
And what I need to do is walk away.
Fuck, I don’t want to walk away.
I wonder if I could feel it again. I desperately want to. I lower his hand to my ass and hitch my leg up around him once more. He groans and kisses me, lifting me up by the hips until I’ve wrapped my legs around him.
I kiss his cheek and whisper in his ear.
“You want to push me against the column behind me. You want to take my nipple into your mouth and suck it the way I wanted you to. You want to feel me arch my back and press myself against you. You want to put your hand between us and shove my dress aside so you can feel how wet I am on your fingers.”
His eyes close, picturing it, and then jerks his head back in surprise. “You can feel that?”
I nod. It’s more specific than I had imagined it being.
I can see now why he thinks he knows someone based on their feelings alone.
“I can’t feel anything now that you’ve pulled away.
Maybe it’s only in the heat of the moment?
Has it happened before…?” With someone else?
I want to ask, but I don’t want to think of him with anyone else right now.
“No,” he says firmly. “Never.” He stares at me in wonder. Is it his power, or is it mine? Is there something special about us? Something beyond even whatever this is, the intensity of this connection?
He brushes his fingertips on my cheek, looking at me as if he doesn’t believe I’m real. “I always wanted to. I always wanted to share it with someone, to let them feel me like I feel them.”
“I want you to do it,” I say to him, leaning forward and pressing my lips against his jaw. I whisper in his ear, “What you want.”
“Fuck, Sylvie.” He moans a kiss against my lips and carries me to the column. He puts his hand behind my head to take the impact as he shoves me against it, kissing me wildly on my lips, my jaw, my neck.
He presses himself against me, bucking against my core, which burns with heat.
Then he lowers his mouth to my breast, freeing it from my dress.
He sucks it, hard, his lips insistent as his tongue licks circles around my swollen nipple.
I gasp, feeling it deep within me, feeling it send a pulse of need through me, the need to be filled.
“Can you feel that?” he asks as he moves his hand between us, his fingers feeling for an opening in the damp fabric.
“You want to…” My breath catches in my throat. I’m overwhelmed by his desire. “You want to be inside me—”
“Yes,” he hisses. “Fuck, I—”
The door opens behind us, and we spring apart. Ronan puts me down and turns to face out to the city while I turn to the column to smooth my dress, hoping whoever is there can’t see the flush on my skin as I lift the shadows to reveal us.
“Oh, fuck,” says Quinn. “Did I just—”
“What do you want, Quinn?” says Ronan, his voice husky and edged with frustration.
“Sorry, I thought I saw you come out here. It’s the Brakkari ambassador. He’s looking for you, says it’s important.”
Ronan gives me a quick look, and though I can’t feel it, I can read it: apology, penitence, longing. “Lead the way,” he says to Quinn, and he follows her from the balcony, taming the muss from his hair with another regretful backward glance to me as he goes.
I’m left there, cold and reeling, alone in the night.
What the fuck just happened?
I try to collect myself so I can return to the party before I’m missed. I rub the damp spot of my dress against a dry part of the fabric near my hip until it isn’t as obvious. I run my fingers through my hair, smoothing it back into shape.
His fingers in my hair. He had knotted them there, pulled me by it—
Fuck, the desire for him is still close. The shock of Quinn’s arrival splashed cold water on it for a moment, but it’s lurking beneath my skin, hot and ready for him.
I’ve got to get out of here before I run after him and beg him to carry me to his bed, Brakkari ambassador be damned.
Everything inside looks too glaringly bright when I reenter. The party is still underway, people dancing and chatting as if nothing happened on the balcony just now.
As if the entire world didn’t shift on its axis, as if everything didn’t come sliding down off its surface, spilling out into the cosmos, forever changed.
They clink their glasses of beer and wine and chat and flirt and smile while I desperately try to moor myself. There must be something, anything, here that can put me back on solid ground.
My eyes catch someone moving in the shadows. He’s wearing a brown robe, an alchemist’s robe, and he’s tall and heavyset.
Hermes.
Just the alchemist I’ve been looking for.
I hadn’t seen him earlier, although would I have even noticed him with Ronan around? But here he is now, and by the looks of it, he’s heading somewhere.
Somewhere I will follow.