Chapter Thirty-Four #2
He did nothing other than leave his watchful stare on her so the warm power beneath her skin burned hotter.
She made a noise of deliberation, then broke the attempt. ‘I guess not.’
Kyan began to rise and her head tipped back to watch him uncertainly, until his hands found her waist. She held her breath as he lifted her and set her on the desk, over the splayed printouts of paintings she’d got from the library and her notes and books on Pre-Raphaelite art and Victorian symbolism.
Right now, she didn’t care about them. There was a new kind of art that had stolen every ounce of her interest.
And he was inches away.
Kyan’s mouth, now level with her eyes, moved. ‘“Pick it up”, you said.’ His voice was rough. ‘You didn’t clarify what.’
It was dangerous territory. An offering and temptation.
She shouldn’t, because with these new developments and the Wake on their heels, it felt even more forbidden.
Yet desire shimmered between them like a veil between worlds.
‘You have no idea …’ he said, voice deeper as his fingers stroked through her loose, wavy hair. Her eyes fluttered. ‘… the things I thought about these last six months.’
She wanted to luxuriate in him so intensely, she felt momentarily dizzy. Oh, to know everything. To be able to chart every forbidden inch of him and have him tell her every morsel of his life in that very tone.
Her hands drifted to his waist. The muscle there flexed as she dipped a finger beneath his shirt and ran it along the skin of his hair-grazed stomach. She traced the dip in muscle at the belt of his jeans, hot to the touch, alive with proud veins that ran downwards.
Just the thought of it had a sound stirring at the back of her throat and her fingers curling around the band, nails scraping very slightly.
It changed the energy, electrified it. Made this suddenly so much more serious.
Kyan’s head tilted, eyes focused on her mouth with the kind of primal hunger that set an incandescent desire burning in her core.
He closed the gap, the knuckles of one hand brushing her jaw, then stroking down her neck, feather light and so slowly despite his eyes not leaving hers. Every single part of her felt that soft touch; relished the fact that he clearly savoured it too.
Then he reached the base of her throat. His thumb brushed it before pushing back the cardigan at her shoulders. It fell gradually, stroking down her arms in a way that made her shiver and set her breasts to aching.
He paused, his eyes asking her one heated question: is this okay?
Nicole nodded slightly and his knuckles continued downwards.
Her breath held as he skimmed the tops of her breasts, his mouth so much closer, his steady sigh teasing her parted lips. The drugging scent of him and overwhelming affection became the only things she could feel. The only thing that existed in the world.
Then his mouth brushed hers with the same soft stroke he was using on her body.
Once, one way.
Twice, back the other.
So soft, so delicious.
He was holding himself back. She could feel the sheer force of all that desire like a tidal wave. And she wanted it to crash over her.
She needed it.
So when he tilted his head for another teasing pass, she parted her lips over his in an almost kiss. Then her teeth bit down slowly on his lower lip.
A growl snarled at the back of his throat.
Kyan’s left hand dragged her closer as his right skimmed up her neck, fingers spreading over her jaw to tilt it back.
‘We shouldn’t,’ Kyan said against her mouth.
Her eyes nearly fluttered closed. She couldn’t form a single word over the blinding, searing temptation. Frustration and disappointment burned hot behind her eyes.
But it was one look into his and one soft touch to his face, that seemed to change his mind. From it, she knew all of that yearning, all of that almost-broken-hearted feeling she’d been carrying around since the Wake had given him this hunt, had turned her eyes into a gallery of longing.
With it, his eyes softened, hardened.
Then he snarled two words. ‘Fuck it.’
His kiss claimed her with a deep stroke of tongue. Scorching heat doused her spine, flooding her chest and between her thighs as he pressed his hips between her spread legs, and set her eyes rolling back in her head.
She almost sobbed at the rush of pleasure, at the full-body craving, because she wanted more and she hated that they were being forced to resist. That this felt so natural, so good, and she couldn’t have it without danger hovering nearby.
Nicole gripped his shirt. Some wild part of her didn’t want to stop, even when she heard the strain of the fabric and felt it tear beneath her grip, even though she could feel how it only made him want more, the entire immortal bulk of him leaning closer as if unseen hands were holding him back; his face a mask of restrained desire.
Then his thumb found the frustrated tear she hadn’t realised had spilled down her cheek, and he cupped her face to brush it away with his lips.
‘Mo ghrá,’ he murmured against her temple.
She blinked to try to reel in the emotions. There was that phrase again.
‘I won’t let them take you.’
He dipped his head to capture her gaze, his own burning with a vow and blown out with hunger, his body primed, even now, in case of danger.
But that wasn’t what she was afraid of.
What would he let them do to him in her place? To stop them. To keep her safe?
Who was keeping him safe?
She placed her hand on his chest, over the thick muscle, to feel the steady beat of his heart beneath. Because she was just as protective as he was. She wanted him to know that he wasn’t without a family now.
‘I will protect you,’ she promised.
Thanks to the Wake, she had to keep smothering herself and her feelings.
Keep her fear burning into the dark hours of the night as she thought about the thousand ways they could take her family.
Keep her running through paintings and scenes in her own life, searching for the moment they could have possibly discovered her.
Reality and art blurring until everything had taken on furious brushstrokes, slashing through the canvas of her thoughts.
Spattered with blood; crackling with fire.
She was so frustrated.
She was so angry.
She was so scared.
And one thing her mother had written about in her books was how dangerous a scared hunter could be.
And how vulnerable.
‘Come with me,’ Kyan said.
He stepped back, and she mourned the loss of his closeness, her body reeling.
Kyan shut and locked the window as Nicole tried to corral herself back into some semblance of civility, some level of placid human feeling.
She went to gather her papers and cardigan when Kyan stopped her.
He blew out the candles, took her hand, and, ducking out of the room, led her down the quiet corridor.
She heard Remi’s music mute as she activated a soundproofing device so she could keep playing, and the soft sound of Bells’ breathing as she slept. The others were still on the roof.
Kyan opened a door wider and Nicole stepped into his bedroom.
It was exactly as she’d imagined: dark and cosy with an enormous four-poster bed of glossy wood, the base carved with Celtic symbols and oak leaves. At the back of it, like a headboard, was a waterfall of navy fabric.
One small light burned beside the bed. The other side was lamp-less, as if he never had anyone there.
Her bag had been put on a side chair by Biróg.
‘I’ll just shower and change,’ Kyan said. ‘Climb in.’
She glimpsed the adjoining bathroom, done in dark brown marble with low, moody lighting.
Hesitantly, Nicole climbed up into the plush bed that sank luxuriously beneath her and a sigh filled her as the crisp, slightly cool sheets fell over her bare legs.
She curled on her side, trying to ignore the steady pulses through her body, how needy and hot it was in certain places, enough to make her restless. She forced herself to listen to the stream of the shower, to not think of Kyan only a door away, stripped of his clothes.
Nicole distracted herself by running her fingers over the Irish details of the bedframe.
When he re-emerged, scenting of steam and a woodsy, bergamot soap, he was clad in pyjama trousers, but shirtless.
Her mouth went as dry as unoiled pigment.
After everything, she hadn’t had a real moment to let herself look at him.
To feel like everything in Estwood hadn’t been a figment of her imagination.
She had no photos, only sketches she’d done afterwards that felt like they lacked …
everything. If it wasn’t for the fact she was irreparably different and their lives were irreparably different, she might think he had been nothing but a fantasy.
Now, she took in his honed warrior’s physique.
The thick planes of his chest. The deep grooved, hair-shaded muscle that would have been nicked with countless scars, stab wounds, and the silver lines of claw and bite marks had he not been an Empyreal.
The wide, heavy shoulders. And somehow, most deliciously, his wet hair which had curled up in the steam.
No longer in its previously shorn style, that one feature proved his rebellion, his character.
He was allowing himself to want and need again.
She wanted to fist her fingers into it with a surprising ferocity.
For a moment in the luxuriant gold lamplight, he was so regal, so powerful, she felt briefly overwhelmed.
‘You have a tendency to ruin my T-shirts,’ he explained, draping the one she’d ripped on a side chair.
Nicole’s smile was almost a wince. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I like it.’
She smothered the urge to scream.
He came around the other side of the bed, the mattress dipping heavily, and his arm reached out, creating a warm space for her to slide into.
Nicole allowed her body to meet his and took a moment to soak in the heat and bulk and scent of him. Allowed her cheek to meet the dip of his shoulder, her leg to hook over the sculpted length of his thigh. Her muscles relaxed in such a bone-deep way she almost cried with relief.