Chapter 14 #2
His brows tugged together. “Doing what?”
Her fingers tightened in the fabric beneath her palm, as if the answer mattered more than she wanted it to. “Looking at me like I matter.”
The honesty in the statement hit him like a blow. Not because she said it, but because she’d said it with such certainty that it was clearly not a joke, not a flirtation, not even a question. Just a statement of something she’d noticed and couldn’t quite believe.
His hand shifted from her waist to the center of her back, drawing her fully into him.
Her body came willingly, warm and tense all at once.
The shape of her shifted against him now.
The delicate press of her breasts against his chest. The curve of her waist under his hand.
The faint tremor running through her that had nothing to do with cold.
“You do matter,” he said.
She shut her eyes briefly at the words, then opened them again, and what he saw there nearly undid him.
Longing. Fear. Hope she didn’t trust enough to let free.
The ballroom vanished for him then. So did the contract, the Donatis, the layered problems waiting inside the larger war. There was only her and the impossible ache of wanting to take away every hand that had ever taught her to doubt her worth.
Her palms slid higher along his chest, up to the lapels of his jacket, fisting there as though she needed the leverage. The movement brought her mouth within an inch of his. “This is probably a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved back.
“You didn’t even hesitate,” she said, and there was something almost dazed in it.
“No.”
“That should frighten me.”
“Does it?”
Her eyes held his. “No.”
For a heartbeat neither of them moved. The air between them grew thinner now, charged with the dangerous awareness of how close they were standing. Magnus watched the slight rise of her breasts, the way her mouth parted as if she already knew what he was about to do.
The answer stripped the last of his restraint.
For one brief second Magnus looked at her as if measuring the distance between what he should do and what he was about to do. Tommaso’s face flashed through his mind. The memory sharpened the hunger already burning through him.
He took her mouth. He didn’t ask permission. He simply claimed the kiss the way he claimed territory. Direct. Certain. Leaving no space for doubt.
The kiss hit with all the force he had been containing since the ballroom. Since the first glimpse of Tommaso too close to her. Since hearing her repeat the bastard’s words. Since watching her stand under the consequence of fresh betrayal and still remain upright.
He kissed her like a man with too much anger and too much hunger and no intention of pretending otherwise.
Elia answered instantly. Her fingers tightened in his jacket and she rose onto her toes, bringing herself closer, opening for him with a desperate kind of trust that went straight through his control.
The first touch of her tongue against his tasted of champagne and the last thin thread of patience burned away.
He deepened the kiss without mercy.
Her gasp disappeared into his mouth. The sound nearly wrecked him.
His hand spread across her back, dragging her flush against him.
Through layers of silk and tailored cloth he learned her body again in sharper detail than any man should while still standing under the open sky at a gala full of enemies.
The fit of her against him felt violently right.
Too right. The curve of her waist beneath his palm.
The yielding heat of her body where it pressed into his.
The fact that she didn’t pull away when the kiss turned rougher, deeper, edged with all the things he hadn’t said.
She wanted this.
Wanted him.
The knowledge struck hot.
Her hands left his jacket only to slide upward into his hair, and the sensation of her fingers threading through it nearly made him lose what little discipline remained. He kissed her harder in answer, swallowing the startled sound she made.
Her warm, responsive body sent a fierce pulse of satisfaction through him. She arched against him at once. Not retreating. Seeking more.
The movement dragged a harsh, dangerous sound from his chest.
Elia’s fingers tightened in his hair. “Magnus...”
He broke the kiss only long enough to move his mouth along the line of her jaw.
Her pulse hammered beneath his lips and he wanted more.
Wanted to stay there until she stopped thinking about contracts and debt and names like Bianca and Vittorio and Tommaso and remembered only this.
Him. His hands. His mouth. The fact that she was wanted for herself and not for the uses men imagined they could make of her.
“Say it again,” he murmured against her skin.
She tilted her head back slightly, giving him more of her throat without seeming to understand the magnitude of the surrender. “What?”
“My name.”
She inhaled sharply. “Magnus.”
The sound of it in that voice, low and shaken and intimate, shot through him like a match striking oil.
He lifted his head and kissed her again, slower this time but no less dangerous. Their mouths met with the kind of hunger that had long since moved past surprise and settled into recognition. This was not sudden. This was not even reckless, not really. It was inevitable and both of them knew it.
Her hands slid down from his hair to his shoulders, then back to his chest, palms pressing over him as if mapping the breadth of him in silence.
He could not get enough of the contact. He wanted her hands everywhere.
He wanted the entire impossible night stripped down to this balcony and her body against his and the certainty that no one would ever take her from him.
She shivered when his hand moved from her back to the side of her throat, his thumb brushing the silken skin where her pulse throbbed.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, though the darkness in it made it clear he didn’t want that answer.
Her eyes lifted to his. Whatever she saw there made her breath catch again. “I don’t want you to stop.” Her fingers tightened in his tux, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away. “I choose you, Magnus.”
That sentence should have been enough to send him further over the edge than he already was. Instead it settled into him with a strange, brutal tenderness that nearly hurt. No one had ever taught her that wanting could be spoken aloud without punishment.
He kissed her once more, thorough now, as if he had all the time in the world and not a moment to spare. Her mouth softened beneath his. Her body did too, some of the tightness easing as she leaned fully into him. He caught the shift and gathered it greedily.
For one dangerous, suspended moment the world outside the balcony ceased to exist.
No Donatis.
No contract.
No larger war.
Just the taste of her and the heat of her under his hands and the terrifying knowledge that he would burn everything required to keep her.
Magnus lifted his head slightly, still close enough to taste the warmth of her against his mouth.
For a moment neither of them moved. Her lips were parted from the kiss, her body still pressed fully into his as though stepping away had never occurred to her.
His hand remained at the side of her throat, thumb resting just beneath her earlobe where her heartbeat raced.
He watched the awareness move through her again. The realization that she was standing on a balcony full of enemies with her body molded against his. That his hand was on her throat, not in threat but in possession. That she had just told him not to stop.
Her fingers tightened against his chest. “Magnus,” she murmured.
The sound of it dragged heat through him. Their breaths mingling in the narrow space between them. For a dangerous second he considered abandoning the ballroom entirely. Taking her to a room in the hotel. Locking a door. Letting the rest of the night burn without them.
Then instinct stirred.
Magnus lifted his head a fraction more, his attention sliding reluctantly away from her mouth.
A small disturbance rippled through the darkness beyond her shoulder. Not sound. Not quite movement. Just enough to drag Magnus’s attention away from her mouth.
Something shifted behind her.
His body tightened.
Too late.
Steel flashed.
The blade drove toward Elia.