Chapter 10
ten
. . .
Phoebe lay in Thorne’s bed and could not sleep.
The sheets smelled like him. That was the problem. Well, one of the problems. Peppermint and frost mixed with the scent of a winter morning. She pressed her face into his pillow and inhaled before she could stop herself. The scent moved through her chest, settling into her body.
His bedroom was spare and precise the way he was.
Nothing extra, nothing wasted, every surface clear.
But the wool blanket folded at the foot of the bed had been washed so many times it felt like crushed velvet under her fingers.
It was soft enough that she’d pulled it up over the duvet and around her shoulders without thinking.
But the most surprising thing was that the nightstand held actual paper books with cracked spines and pages wavy from use next to a reading lamp angled for someone who stayed up too late reading them.
She picked up the top book and read the title. It was a collection of poetry. Earth poetry, she realized as she opened the cover. Emily Dickinson. The spine was broken in three different places. She set it down and stared at the ceiling.
On the other side of the bedroom wall, in the living room, the leather of the couch creaked as Thorne shifted his body. Her ears tracked the sounds with a precision that embarrassed her.
He was awake. She was awake. The wall between them was the only thing separating them, and her body was trembling. Not from fear or cold, but from want. The want was there, and he was not, and it was excruciating.
She squeezed her eyes tight, willing the want to go away.
Instead, she thought about his arms.
She thought about the cold lock of them around her on the stage floor, his chest a wall of muscle against her while his breath ghosted against her hair.
She thought about those same arms in these sheets, his body against hers, the temperature contrast between his cool skin and the overwhelming heat pooling between her thighs.
She thought about his mouth pressing against the curve where her shoulder met her throat.
His hand flat on her stomach, his fingers spread wide, and the cold of him sliding under the thin cotton of her borrowed sleep shirt.
The want flowed through her like a slow fire that started below her navel and refused to stop.
It climbed her ribs, sat in her throat, and pulsed like a heartbeat between her thighs.
She pressed her face harder into his pillow and breathed him in again and accepted the fact that she had already lost the fight against doing that.
You could open the door.
It would only take eight steps across the room, and she would be standing over him in the dark, and when she said, “I want you with me,” he’d know she was saying the truth. He’d know the want was real and true. He could open the door and he would know how much she wanted him.
She closed her eyes instead.
It was the hardest thing she had done since landing on this planet.
Safe.
It was the first word Phoebe thought when she woke the next morning. She snuggled deeper into the blankets and allowed the feeling to wash over her for three disoriented seconds. Warmth, and safety, and winter with peppermint in the sheets surrounding her.
Then she remembered, and the warmth became something more complicated.
A soft knock at the bedroom door, and she opened her eyes fully.
Thorne’s deep voice came low through the wood. “Coffee.”
She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. The borrowed sleep shirt, one of his that was miles too big for her, had decided to slip off her shoulder and stay there. She pulled it back into place the best she could while making her way to the door. She opened it.
Thorne stood in the hallway in a plain white shirt and dark flannel pants with his silver-white hair mussed from the couch and his bare feet on the cold floor.
He was holding two steaming mugs in his hands.
His eyes dropped to the shirt she was wearing.
It was one of his. Something moved across his face for the briefest moment before his stoic mask clamped it back down.
The want that had blessedly left her alone long enough for her to get a few hours of sleep came rushing back for an encore performance, and her nipples hardened into pebbles.
She had traveled her planet and performed with some of the most beautiful humans alive during her career, and none of them had undone her the way this man had in mere seconds with his bare feet and mussed hair bringing her coffee in his bedroom doorway at seven in the morning.
“The cream ratio may not be precise,” he said. “I do not keep dairy, so I acquired some from the market vendor who opens early.”
He’d gone out already. Before she woke up. Dressed like that to get cream for her coffee.
She took the mug made exactly the way she liked it, with the right amount of cream turning it the color of caramel.
Their fingers brushed on the handoff, and the sensation of his cold fingers against her warm skin shot through her hand, traveled through her arm, and settled somewhere behind her navel.
She concentrated very hard on holding the cup steady.
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” His eyes moved over her face with that careful, seeing quality he possessed. “You slept well?”
“I did.” She took a sip. Perfect. “Your bed’s comfortable.”
His jaw tightened a fraction. “I am glad.”
They stood in the small hallway and drank coffee in silence, and it should have been awkward, but it was not.
It was the quietest, most peaceful five minutes she had spent with another person in years, and when the mugs were empty, she carried them both to the kitchen and washed them in his sink before she handed them to him to dry.
“I should get dressed,” she said, noticing the breathiness in her voice and not knowing what to do about that.
He was pulling his uniform jacket over his shoulders when she returned fully dressed twenty minutes later. The minty flavor of the emergency dental kit she kept in her bag reminded her of him, and a thought flashed through her mind faster than she could stop it. I wonder what he tastes like?
She pushed the thought aside and ignored the heat climbing from her neck up her cheeks, flushing her dark skin even darker.
She gathered her things. Coat on. Bag over her shoulder. He came to the door and reached past her for the handle, his arm crossing her body close enough that she could feel the cold radiating from his forearm through her sleeve.
“Thank you,” she said, and wondered if his truth sense could read the unspoken words she hadn’t said.
Thank you for coming when I called. Thank you for giving me your bed. Thank you for going out in the cold before dawn to buy cream because you remembered how I take my coffee. Thank you for pulling my hand off your wrist last night when you could have kept it.
He nodded. His hand found the door handle.
She kissed him.
Her lips decided before her brain had given permission.
Her body had decided on her behalf, one hand bracing against his chest, rising onto her toes, her warm mouth against his cold one.
He froze.
One full second of absolute stillness passed with his hand locked on the door handle.
His whole body was rigid, every muscle seized, not breathing.
The cold radiating from him hard enough to prickle against her palm where it pressed to his chest, and his heart hammered against her hand at a rate she was fairly certain was not Mentharian-standard.
Then he kissed her back.
The careful discipline that had held him at arm’s length for weeks cracked open like ice breaking on a river, and she felt it in the way his mouth moved against hers.
The press of him was both unhurried and starving at the same time.
Thorough and desperate. His cold lips parted hers with a precision that was entirely, unmistakably him.
His free hand came up and cradled her jaw.
His icy fingers spread along the side of her throat, his thumb against her cheekbone, and the cold of his palm against her flushed skin sent a shiver that traveled from her face to the base of her spine.
She tasted peppermint and frost and an ache that had been wanting this very thing for longer than she had known, and the moan that came from her was not dainty or polished. It was pure want given sound.
He pulled back. Not far. And pressed his forehead against hers, his breath unsteady and visible in the cold air between their mouths. His hand still on her jaw, his thumb still against her cheekbone, trembling.
He leaned toward her. She watched the war happen behind his eyes in real time: the want, the discipline, and the fear all visible for once on a face that showed nothing to anyone. The sight of Thorne losing a fight with himself over kissing her again was more intimate than the kiss itself.
He stopped.
“We should go.” His voice was rougher than she’d ever heard it, scraped raw and barely recognizable as the measured bass that gave commands on his comm. “There is a full security review before tonight’s performance. I need to make sure you are safe.”
His fingers slid away from her face, and he opened the door.
The cold air hit her flushed cheeks. She walked into it carrying the taste of him on her mouth and the print of his hand on her jaw and the knowledge that the most controlled man she’d ever met had kissed her back like he was drowning and she was the air.
Ember took one look at Phoebe’s face when she walked into the bakery, and her eyes went wide with delight.
Kaelor was behind the counter, his hands and forearms flour-dusted and radiating enough warmth that the windows had fogged at the edges. He glanced from Phoebe to Ember and back again with a quiet half-smile that said he had already guessed exactly what had happened.
“Sit down,” Ember said. “I just pulled cinnamon rolls.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need—”
“Sit. Down.”