35. One Kiss
Chapter 35
One Kiss
BETH
“ E lizabeth. Are you in there?” A powerful knock at the door sends a jolt through me.
I’ve been standing by the window, crying, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to suffer through a second ceremony and planning an ungraceful escape. I hurriedly dry the salt trails on my face and turn to the door in time to see Aidan barrel into the room.
There he is—the groom, looking as though he’s about to head off to war.
“Aidan,” I croak. “Is your mother alright?”
He slows down, his gaze riveted to my packed suitcase, my Shadow mask tucked on top of the rose gold leather. “You’re leaving,” he replies, his voice filled with an uncertainty I’ve rarely heard from him.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The silence thickens and expands, heavy with all the things I haven’t said and the memories he can’t reach. His gaze drifts past me, out the window, to the gardens below.
To the place where our love flourished.
“The queen is resting,” he begins, his voice tight and formal. “But she wants the wedding to go along without her.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it even more disheveled than it was when he entered, before his gaze snaps back to me. “She recognized you. I saw it.”
“Yes,” I say.
His brows pull together. “I can’t remember.”
“I know,” I reply softly, the pain of it anchored deep in my chest.
“We were together, yes?” he asks quickly.
I answer with a nod.
“Did you truly love me?”
“Yes!”
For a moment, I’m back there with him, young and in love, the world full of possibilities.
“And I loved you?” he holds his breath, like my answer could shift his world on its axis.
I swallow hard. “Yes. Even though you ended it.”
“Are you alright, my prince?” A male voice asks from the corridor, popping our bubble.
Aidan’s gaze never leaves me as he doubles back to close the door. “Stand down, Peter. Just wait for me to come out.”
“At your command, Your Highness.”
My eyes narrow. “You brought guards with you?”
Aidan rubs the back of his skull, the gesture betraying his frustration. “I came in here to interrogate you.”
“Interrogate me?” I inch backward, but he stalks closer, as if my subtle retreat taunts him.
Dark embers flicker in his amber eyes. “My mother told Heather that you’d cursed me.”
The accusation tingles across my cheeks like a physical blow, and my arms fall at my sides. Thera believes this, or she wouldn’t have been able to say it. I bump against the wall, and my back hunches, my heart in tatters.
A hundred years haven’t eroded the royals’ distrust toward my kin. The hatred that follows them—and me—wherever we go.
“Why did you come to the wedding?” Aidan breathes.
I play with my fingers, eyes cast down. “I had to see you. It was incredibly selfish, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“I’m not in love with Heather, and as far as I know, I’ve never loved anyone else.” He raises my chin with his index finger. “Is that because you cursed me?”
My heart booms so hard, I fear it might leap out of my chest. “No. I swear it.”
Aidan doesn’t love his bride, and the knowledge fills me with a hot, molten heat.
“Or enchanted me. Or cast any kind of spell over me whatsoever?” he adds.
“No. I’m not playing on words, here.”
“I’m not sure what to believe. If you’re even truly Fae.” He curls a hand around my shoulder, slowly raising it to my neck in a meticulous, trial-and-error manner, until his thumb traces the shell of my pointy ear. “I should have you arrested, really.”
If he’s testing my reaction, or his, I wouldn’t know, but my lids flutter at the warm caress. I lean deeper into it, the years I spent fantasizing about his touch nullifying any survival instinct I still possess. No matter what he’s saying, my body can't process that Aidan would ever hurt me, and it’s reacting accordingly.
“The drum of my heart when I’m with you…the tremors of your magic… It’s intoxicating. I’ve never felt anything like it.” His eyes flick to my lips. “Kiss me.” He breathes the words as though he’s afraid to say them out loud.
No. I’m older and wiser now.
I look away, taken aback by his demand. “And what would a kiss accomplish, exactly?” I chuckle darkly.
“You know what fairytales say about true love’s kiss… It might dispel whatever curse or enchantment erased my memories,” he says. His voice remains eerily nonchalant, but his eyes gleam with mischief as he prevents me from widening the gap between us further.
Oh, how I’ve missed this impish side of him.
A smile pierces through my anguish, and I rest a hand over his breastbone. “Silly Faen stories.” My fingers shake as I trace the v-shape of his wedding waistcoat. “But it’s so you to suggest such a thing.”
“Is it?” he murmurs. “I’ve always thought of myself as a skeptic.”
“Then they’ve altered more than your memories.”
He rests his forehead on mine. “I can’t believe my parents went to such lengths to erase you because they didn’t want me to marry a commoner. It sounds far-fetched, even for them. Especially my mother…” His eyes close for a moment.
A hiccup rakes my throat. Here we go again. “There’s something you should know. Your parents didn’t try to erase me because I was a moth.”
His gaze hardens, a little more calculating than it was before, his hold on my neck a little heavier, but not to the point of becoming uncomfortable. By Thanatos, the way I’m feeling, I’d let him choke me to death if it earned me back his trust.
“I’m part siren. A Sea mutt.” I hold my breath, entirely focussed on his reaction, proud that I mustered the courage to say it without being cornered into it. “That’s why your parents never trusted your feelings for me. That and the fact that it made me completely unsuitable as a potential queen.”
Aidan’s nose wrinkles in the cutest way, but he doesn’t draw back. “But siren songs don’t last more than a day.”
Tears mist in my eyes, his reaction so similar despite the drastically different circumstances. “You said the same thing back then.” I stand on my tip-toes without meaning to, my nails skimming the side of his face.
He angles my lips to his. A flicker of something joyful and fragile—perhaps hope—illuminating his face. If it hadn’t nearly killed me to see him with a ruby dagger in his hands, ready to swear his life and future to another woman, I’d turn him away. But this is my last chance.
There’s nothing quite like a second first kiss.
Aidan presses his mouth to mine with caution, the way he’d approach a wild, untamed beast. It’s not a dive, but a careful exploration. An investigation full of riddles, his tongue serving as a final question mark as it slips past my defenses.
And the answer to all of them is, fuck yes!
He’s no longer the man who broke my heart.
I’m not the stranger who crashed his wedding.
In that kiss, we’re more than just the sum of all parts, more than old lovers separated by space and time and the oh-so-annoying bout of amnesia. We’re us . Aidan’s body apparently remembers details his mind has forgotten as he takes hold of my waist, flattening me to the wall with just the right pressure to set my body ablaze.
I force my eyes open, shying away from him. “Anything?”
His chest rises and falls. “Blessed Flame. Are you sure this isn’t our first kiss? Because I don’t fathom how I could have been made to forget that .”
A heavy sigh drags down the elation that had built up in my chest. “Quite sure.”
He caresses the side of my face with his thumb. “I wish I could remember.”
“But you don’t. That’s okay.” I tuck my chin down to hide my face. So he doesn’t see me crumble.
“No, it’s not.” He leans in again, but I press one finger to his mouth.
“You said one kiss.”
“I feel…greedy when I’m with you,” he chucks out, the words rough and quiet, brimming with actual pain.
If I had any doubt this was my Aidan, this sentence disperses the very last one of them.
I sink my nails in his hairline, and he hums in approval, devouring me. His mistrust acts as gasoline on the flames, spicing up the first intimate moment we’ve shared in a century with a pinch of desperation, and a sprinkle of violence.
Any false hope that I might have blown our chemistry out of proportions during our time apart is absolutely dead, my heart hammering in my chest.
A loud knock on the door coaxes a snarl out of him, and he finally breaks the kiss.
“Your Highness, we need to know you’re alright.”
Aidan’s arms shake, his fist curling and uncurling before he tears himself away. “I told you to just wait .” He strides over to ease the door open. “You’re all dismissed.”
“Sir?”
“Leave us. I won’t ask again,” he barks before closing it again and clicking the lock.
Aidan walks down the length of the room and back, his features draped in shadows. “Was it always like this?”
“Always.” I hide my hands behind my back, the sweet leftover sting of his kisses on my lips throbbing under his scrutiny.
I smother a heated moan as he shrugs off his waistcoat. He throws it over the foot of the bed and unbuttons his cufflinks, looking ready to pounce .
“Maybe we should—” I start, but he storms back over to me and swallows the rest of my sentence with a bruising kiss.
Aidan pins me to the wall with his knee, one hand exploring the thigh-high slit of my silk dress until he reaches the lace of my underwear, his fingertips digging into the flesh of my hip. I pull the shirt off his back, peeling one sleeve off at a time. The muscles in his shoulders are broader and more defined than they were, and I rake my nails over the grooves and ridges.
His nostrils flare. “Fuck. I want you.”
His touch grows intently precise, as if he found his old How to Drive Beth Crazy playbook. He brushes the curve of my buttocks to the tender skin of my inner thigh back and forth, and I wrap one leg around his midriff, my center rubbing against the enticing shape of his erection.
His head falls forward. “I want you more than I ever thought possible, which isn’t a good sign considering the accusations made against you,” he chucks out, his voice unsteady. “But my body remembers you, even though I can’t, and it’s irresistible.”
His big hand stretches the lace of my underwear as it travels back to my front, creeping dangerously close to my pulsing heat.
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“Maybe. But I kind of want to see you come, first.”
My breasts strain against the low neckline of my dress. “Don’t play with me. Please.”
“Too bad, because that’s exactly what I mean to do, Miss Elizabeth.” He slips the silk down below my hard, painful nipples, and licks his lips at the sight. “Tell me about us. Where did we meet?”
“In the labyrinth.”
He dips his head down to taste each breast, sucking them into his mouth and teasing the peaks until I’m panting.
“And where did I taste you for the first time?”
He means more than just a kiss and slides down to his knees, turning my brain to mush.
I grip his shoulders. “Wait. Are you still going through with the wedding?”
“Tell me not to,” he breathes against my inner thigh, the husky demand rippling across my sensitive flesh. “Tell me this is real, and not just some curse or spell.”
“It’s real.”
“Where did I taste you for the first time?” he repeats.
I quake all over, tugging on his hair. “At the cabin. On St. John’s Eve.”
“How hard did you come, then?”
“Harder than I’d ever come before.”
He grins wickedly. “Not as hard as you’ll come now. Do you want me to touch you, Miss Elizabeth?”
“Yes!”
Aidan pushes the lace of my underwear aside. He sinks one finger inside me, then two, and alternates between hard strokes and slow circles as though he feels jealous of his past self, competing with a version of himself he feels too distant from.
My belly cramps at how beautiful he is. If he flicked his tongue across the aching bundle of nerves, I’d simply die.
“Look at me. I need to make sure you mean it.”
The eye contact feels scandalous as Aidan drags his thumb across my sensitive flesh. The friction between the soaked lace and the hard pad of his thumb coaxes a gasp out of me with a heavy, delightful stroke. He darts his tongue out to touch his bottom lip, his amber eyes darker and more impatient than I remember.
He licks me over the lace, the rub of his tongue hot and soft. My head falls to the wall at my back as he dives for a deeper taste.
Aidan pins me in place with both hands as he feasts on me, drawing out long, breathless praises out of my lungs.
I curl my hands in his hair, my lips parting in shock as I come hard, grinding myself against his hungry tongue without shame.
I shake all over, squeezing my lids shut.
“That was fucking beautiful. I want to see it again,” he says on a low growl.
I claw at his shoulders. “Stand up. I need you inside me.”
“I can’t. Not until I vet your story further.” He arches a brow. “Isn’t this better than a prison cell?”
“Depends if you’re in there with me,” I deadpan.
The corners of his mouth quirk. “I like how you think, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Call me Beth, please. Like you used to.”
He leans in for a long, intense kiss, before finally saying, “Alright. Beth .”
I cup a hand over his hot, hard cock and start to lower to my knees, but he squeezes my hips to keep me standing. “Don’t.”
“Are you sure?” I tease. “You used to love my mouth.”
A dark chuckle grates his throat. “Ah, hells. I don’t doubt that at all. But I can’t right now; I have to keep some semblance of control over this clusterfuck.” His eyes burn into me tenfold as he growls, hungry for more and yet denying himself the release he needs. “But mark my words. Once your story checks out, I will spend an entire day inside your mouth.”
I raise my brows, surprised by his restraint. “You’re more patient than you used to be.”
“Argh.” He stumbles backward with a grimace of pain, curling onto himself.
“What’s happening?” I ask quickly. “Are you hurt?” My eyes scan him from head to toe, trying to figure out what went wrong.
Fire burns through the top of his trousers, and the fabric covering the Mark of the Gods blackens and flakes to ashes.
“Aidan…” I gasp, shocked.
Our gazes meet for a fleeting, disastrous second. The guilt I read in his amber depths wrecks me.
“The queen…” he breathes.
He barrels out of my room, and Thanatos forgive me, I run after him.