Chapter 22
When I woke, the fire was nothing but embers, and though snow and sleet still pattered lightly against the roof and the windows, the howling wind had died down. Through the shutters I could see only inky darkness: not yet morning. I’d never felt such relief in my life.
I lay there for a long time in Gareth’s arms, listening to him breathe.
We’d hardly moved as we slept. I wished I never had to move again.
His chest underneath my cheek, his thigh resting between my legs, his arm draped loosely across my back—every bit of him was solid and warm.
I felt like a sated cat, curled up with a belly full of cream.
But if we awakened to a frigid room in the morning, leaving our little sanctuary would be even more unbearable.
I carefully slipped out of his embrace and padded naked to the stove to rekindle the fire.
The floor was like ice under my feet, but I waited until the flames had caught and were crackling steadily before I turned back to the bed.
Gareth was watching me with the dearest, dreamiest smile on his face. “I can’t see you that well without my glasses,” he said softly, “but even as a blur, you take my breath away. A very shapely blur, I should say.”
I retrieved his glasses from where they’d fallen and climbed back into bed. Straddling him, I slid his glasses on, then sat back a little and grinned. “What about now?”
“Hmm. Well, let me see.” He put his hands behind his head and adopted an undeniably professorial expression. “This requires serious consideration.”
“You take your job very seriously, it seems.”
“Impossible not to when the subject at hand is so enticing.”
His gaze raked down my body with unabashed desire. I circled my hips gently against his, relishing how hard he was.
“Well, Professor?” I murmured. “Do I pass muster?”
“In fact, you’re exemplary.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s far too academic a word.”
“What about resplendent?” He shifted me slightly and sat up, his arm hooked around my waist, and started pressing soft kisses to my wrist, my forearm, the crook of my elbow.
“Ravishing?” he suggested. “Irresistible?”
The low murmur of his voice against my skin made me shiver. “An improvement, certainly, but I think you can do even better.”
I’d barely said the words before he cupped the back of my neck with his hand and brought my lips down to his with a hungry little growl.
The air was freezing, but wherever he touched my chilled skin felt like a warm kiss of sunshine: his mouth on mine, his thighs hard and lean beneath me.
Then he palmed one of my breasts and gently pinched my nipple, and a searing jolt of pleasure made me break away from him, gasping, and reach down for the blankets that separated us.
I was soaked and aching, ready to pull him free and ride him until I saw stars.
But he stopped me with a hand on my wrist and pulled back, breathing hard, with a bashful smile.
“As much as I want you to do exactly what you were about to do,” he said, his voice low and rough, “I have a request to make. It may sound silly, but I fell asleep thinking about it, and I did tell you I’ve dreamt about loving you slowly.”
His words conjured images that made me even more desperate for him, but somehow I managed to control myself and keep my hands above the blankets. “I do recall something about you wanting to worship me.”
“For hours,” he added. “An important detail.”
“Well, then? I’m listening.” I canted my hips forward just enough to make him a little bit sorry for the delay. He groaned sharply and leaned into me with a breathy laugh.
“You don’t play fair,” he said, kissing my shoulder.
“Make your request before I get tired of you and go back to sleep.”
At that, he slid one hand down my abdomen to dip his fingers between my legs. I cried out sharply at his touch—fire kissing fire—and grabbed on to him, and he looked up at me with a smug grin.
“Tired of me?” he said. “Somehow I don’t think that will happen.”
“Such arrogance.”
“But is it really arrogance if it’s true?”
I pressed my forehead against his, leaning into him. “Gareth, either ask me your question or lay me back on this bed and—”
“Do you have a comb?”
I pulled back a little, blinking at him. “A comb.”
“I forgot mine, and I’d like to…” He gave me a rueful smile. “I’d like to brush your hair.”
“You’re joking.”
“I am entirely serious. Your hair is beautiful, Mara, and there are so many ways I’d like to love you. This is one of them.”
My instinct was to tease him for that, but the sincerity on his face made me bite my tongue. I climbed off him, went to my bag, and brought him one of the wooden combs I always carried with me while traveling, small enough to fit in a pocket.
I handed it to him, feeling suddenly shy. I knew how to have sex. I wasn’t sure I knew how to do whatever this was.
“Where do you want me?” I asked.
He shifted back on the bed and patted the mattress in front of him. “Right here, with your back to me.”
I obeyed with a frown I couldn’t quite hide. “You’re very eager.”
“I want to spoil you,” he replied. “Is that such a terrible thing?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. My parents had spoiled me when I was a child, I supposed, but my memories of them from Ivyhill were patchy, hazy, and the thought of the Warden ever spoiling any of us Roses was laughable.
“No, I suppose not,” I answered, but I felt stupidly tense sitting there before him, waiting for him to begin, and when he first touched my hair, I actually flinched.
He stopped at once. “Are you all right? If you’re uncomfortable, I don’t have to do this.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” I lied. “Just a little cold. Keep going.”
I steeled myself, determined to be the most unflappable person ever to have been spoiled by a librarian with a comb. Slowly, Gareth began untying my hair from its sloppy bun. After our long day of travel, then making love with him and sleeping smashed up against him, it was an absolute mess.
But Gareth was patient, and exceedingly gentle, and by the time my tangled hair hung loose down my back, I felt a little less like a cornered animal.
He pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder. “Can I keep going?”
I nodded, forcing myself to at least try and relax, which at first felt impossible. Even the soft strokes of the comb through the less tangled parts of my hair jarred me.
But then he encountered trickier knots, and instead of just yanking the comb through them until they cooperated—my personal strategy of choice—he grew even gentler. When the comb hit a knot that needed extra care, he tried instead to untangle it with his fingers.
It was then that I started wondering if somewhere in Gareth’s gods-blessed brain he possessed a trace of empathic powers and was using them to placate me, because surely no one could have such a delicate touch as this.
He worked through every last one of my tangles with careful focus.
Whenever his fingers brushed against my nape, he followed the caress with a soft kiss between my shoulder blades.
Soon I closed my eyes and let my chin droop. Once he saw to every tangle, he started drawing the comb down through my hair in long, slow strokes. I shivered, goose bumps erupting all over my body.
He kissed the crown of my head, a low sound of satisfaction rumbling in his chest. “I can’t describe how delighted I am to see you enjoying this.”
I mumbled some kind of agreement, which made him laugh, and once my hair felt like a smooth waterfall cascading down my back, he threaded his fingers through it and started massaging my scalp.
I let out a mortifyingly erotic cry, like he’d just put his head between my legs, not his fingers into my hair.
But my embarrassment disappeared immediately, and all I could do was tilt my head back and lean into his touch.
The slow circling pressure of his fingers completely unspooled me, melting away every bit of tension in my body.
By the time he moved his hands down to my shoulders and started gently kneading them, I felt certain I was about to start crying.
“Are you all right?” Gareth murmured.
I shook my head helplessly. “I’ve never felt anything like this before. Nobody has ever…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. It felt too sad for such a moment. Instead I gave myself up to the bliss of his hands until I could no longer bear the thought of keeping my back to him for even one more second.
When I turned around and took his face in my hands, he frowned a little and brought his hands up to cover mine.
“You’re crying,” he said. “Do you want to talk—”
“No.” I smoothed my thumbs across his stubbled cheeks. He looked so dear in the firelight, so handsome and golden, and suddenly I needed him—on me, in me, beside me, all of it. All of him.
“I want you,” I whispered. Then I kissed him, and he slid his arms around me with a groan, and when he laid me back against the bed, I felt giddy, drunk, as warm and soft as I’d ever been.
He kissed his way down my body and settled between my legs with a deep, contented sigh.
The sound nearly finished me before he’d even begun.
Then he buried his face between my thighs and put his mouth on me, slow and soft, as tender and thorough as he’d been with my hair.
My eyelids fluttered shut. I threaded my fingers through his messy golden curls, arched up against him, and let him have me.
***
The Falkeron Cloisters sat atop seaside cliffs on the smallest of the Northern Isles.
Every other settlement on these islands was a ramble of cozy stone cottages, weather-beaten piers, and crooked cobblestone roads strewn with sand and bits of seashells, but the Cloisters were all straight lines and orderly paths, not a stray weed or pebble to be found.
Constructed of the dark gray stone native to the northern coastlines, the holy buildings loomed forbiddingly over the crashing waves below.