Chapter Twenty-Six
It was strange to wake up in bed next to him. Especially when he didn’t have to wake up at all. He was just staring at her,
through the dim light cast by one magical flame. Face propped up on one hand, covers barely around his half-undressed body.
Expression all love, and faint disbelief, and the sweetest hint of total contentment. Like he couldn’t believe she’d let him
do that and then come back with him to his room. But was very glad she had.
And she was glad, too.
She even tried to tell him, by touching her hand to the side of his face. A little caress that somehow ended up sliding down,
down over his collarbone and past the sheets, and oh, he wasn’t really wearing much at all. His chest was bare, and then further
down, she could see—
“Lil,” he blurted out, half shocked.
One hand catching hers, before it could go any further.
It made her face heat. “Sorry. Sorry. I just thought . . . I don’t know. That this was okay now. I mean, it would have been
okay before. But of course I understand that doesn’t just give me permission to do what I like, you know? So if I overstep
or go too fast—” she babbled, even without really knowing what she was babbling for.
“Fast? We just waited thirty years for that.”
“I know but not really. Kind of. Honestly, I would understand.”
“Love, there is nothing to. The speed is not the issue at all.”
“Then what is?”
He rubbed the nape of his neck. Went to say something, then didn’t. Looked away and then back. “Well, I was sort of hoping
if you were willing to do those things with me again, that it could be a little more . . . or a little less . . . I mean not
quite so . . .” he tried to say. But it was only when he saw her encouraging and wholly confused expression that he managed
to blurt the rest out. “I just want to make love to you.”
After which she had to laugh.
Partly with bafflement, but still.
“And do you not think that it felt that way?”
“I think it made my heart almost burst out my chest.”
“Then it seems like it was as it should be.”
“But was it for you?”
He thinks he was too rough and rude, her mind informed her. And in truth, she understood. He’d just spent months being everything but the sweet man he wanted
to be with her. Of course he doubted what he had just done. Of course he craved something more, something gentler, something
softer.
It was just that he didn’t need to.
“I have never in my life felt so loved as I do at this moment. In fact, I know now that my life has been spent longing for some missing thing, because it knew that you were not in it. That there was no you to love me this way, to make me feel good like this, to know me so effortlessly. I think I shut myself off to desire because I knew what really inspiring it is like. And it was always you, only you. You wake me up, you make feel beloved, and to a such a degree you could do it with anything. Fuck me, and it will still fill my heart more than anyone else’s softest touch,” she said, as plainly as he had always done for her, when telling her the most remarkable things.
And she could tell it had almost the same effect.
His expression was the mirror of hers, every time he’d done it. Eyes like moons, the light in them lost to feelings. Unable
to stop staring, not knowing how to speak. Though he managed a lot faster than she had done.
“Did I say I loved you, in the library?” he asked, in a voice hoarse with enough emotion that she knew why he did. She knew
what was coming.
Though she was happy to play innocent anyway.
“You did. You did several times.”
“Then perhaps I should say it again, when you know I have all my senses.”
“I don’t need you to. I know you do. And I hope you know it, too.”
“But if I say no, you might let me hear it from your own lips.”
“Sweetheart, there is no might, there is no let. I love you, and as endlessly as you love me. You call and my sleeping feet
will march to where you are. I call for you, and I have no fear that you will come. And I am not afraid to say it. You’ve
stripped me of every single worry about doing anything like it,” she said.
Then he didn’t wait.
He took her in his arms, in his bed, under the painted stars.
She wanted to wait until he returned with food, before she raised the things they really needed to talk about.
But even the food itself was a distraction.
For some reason he brought her an entire wheel of cheese, and a huge still-steaming round of crusty bread, and all kinds of pickles and meats and salad items. Fat little tomatoes that popped under the pressure of her teeth.
Sliced strips of cucumber that somehow produced the same amount of juice.
She ate ravenously, sitting up in his bed.
Bare from the waist up but uncaring.
“I’ll never get used to just being able to get whatever food I want,” she said, in between bites. “Growing up, we were lucky
to get cheese at all. And if we did have it, it never tasted like this.”
Because it was salty and sweet. It filled her mouth with flavor.
She didn’t even need to slice it. You could scoop some out and almost spread it onto the bread. Truly, she thought, this place
was the land of excess. A dragon’s horde kept from everyone else. She even said as much, after she’d finished, and he made
the rubble vanish with a wave of his wand.
But his response was just a thoughtful look.
Like he was going over something, in his head.
It seemed like a good point to say something. “All right. That’s twice we’ve had sex instead of tackling the elephant in the
room. And because the elephant in the room could, at any point, decide to murder us, I think we should at least try to make
some more headway on talking about it,” she said, as she brushed crumbs from the bed and made space for him to sit back down.
He didn’t, however.
He took a second to hoist his sweater over his head.
He bared his entire torso, from his shoulders to the line of dark hair just about the waistband of his jeans.
And even though she’d just spent the last two hours exploring every inch of that broad, heavy chest, it almost distracted her again anyway.
She found herself mooning over the glow of his skin in the low light.
The steep curve of his back into the bloom of his ass.
Then he started on his belt, the button on his jeans, and oh, she knew he was doing it on purpose. She knew.
“I don’t even remember where we got up to,” he said, as he let them drop.
She came very, very close to reaching for everything she could now see.
Those thick thighs, the slant of muscle either side of his groin, that heavy thing he’d used to make her beg him for more,
barely half an hour ago. Oh god, don’t stop, she’d said, as he held himself over her. Waiting, just like he used to, until the peak she’d almost reached died down.
Before starting all over again.
Partly, she thought, so he could savor everything.
But mostly because it made her come so hard she almost couldn’t take it. It echoed in her now, as she watched him sprawl across
the bed. One arm over his head, gaze just a little too knowing. A little teasing.
“You’re not going to win doing that,” she said, and his expression immediately shifted to exasperation. But he settled in
to listen when she plucked her notebook from her bag, by the bed, and flicked to the right page. “Okay, so. We couldn’t find
any evidence of students who look suspiciously like any of the ones who currently want to kill me. No Sebastian Silly Hair,
no Oliver Chinless, no whoever tried to make me plunge to my death. Which leaves us with these professors, patrons, and members
of the magical authorities.”
“I am certain it’s the headmaster.”
“You only think so because of past events.”
“So you mean like that time when the one before Dodson tried to feed the entire school to an abyssal monster,” he said, so deadpan about it that she couldn’t help laughing. She had to cut it off and replace it with a withering look.
“That doesn’t mean Dodson is the same way. You barely hear from him. He might as well not exist. In fact, honestly, I don’t
even think he does. The last announcement he made, it sounded like Kirkpatrick to me. So who else?”
“There’s got to be at least some chance that answer actually is Kirkpatrick.”
“He had every chance to murder me at the sky door. That seems unlikely.”
He touched his finger to his lip. “All right. Yates was around.”
“Somehow, I don’t think a professor of magical medicine is the culprit.”
“Probably not. And Gibbons is out, too. He couldn’t organize a fen ring if he was made of mushrooms. I once saw him fall asleep
in his soup. Same with Cottingly-Smythe, just old even then. Old and useless. Not to mention completely motiveless. None of
them hated you.”
“So maybe we should think about that more. Who did?”
“I’ve been trying to think, but I’m coming up blank. You were a good student; you didn’t do anything wrong. Or even anything
they might just see as wrong. I mean, you were different, like you are now, and you were a little outspoken sometimes about
how unfair things—”
He stopped dead there. Like he’d finished the thought he’d had a moment ago, after she’d said something about the food. And
it made him go very still. Very unsettled looking. It even seemed like he was holding his breath for a second, gaze far away
and focused on the disturbing idea.
She had to prompt him, in the end. “You just thought of something.”
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Well, just tell me. It could be I will.”
He hesitated. This time, however, she didn’t need to give him a push. “But it’s not anything. I just had this feeling. I had
this feeling every time you started talking about reading books people disapprove of and not liking how this system works
and things. It would make me panic, somehow. And I didn’t know why; it made no sense. It still doesn’t, because I had no idea
anyone but me hurt you. Yet somehow . . . somehow, I think . . .” he said, his words trailing into nothing when he got to