Chapter 39
My eyes opened, my throat tight like I had a hand around my neck, but I didn’t. I had an arm around my waist, and another under my head instead.
March’s face was right in front of mine, his eyes closed, his breathing even. Sleeping.
We were sleeping together in my bed this time. Just sleeping.
My heart skipped half a beat. Last night had been real, though I could have sworn just a second ago when my eyes first opened that I’d dreamed it.
Because no way could reality be so whole.
So clear. No way would March apologize for the night before, and no way could he take all the pain of it away so quickly. So cleanly.
But he had.
I moved, my body a little numb, and I was going to get a little closer so I could sniff the scent of him better, maybe hide my face under his neck, maybe lay my hand over his chest so the rhythm of his heartbeat could lull me back to sleep, but…
March opened his eyes.
Suddenly his arms wrapped around me all the way and he pulled me to his chest hard, squeezed and squeezed until it got a little difficult to breathe.
“Where’re you going?”
A smile stretched my lips slowly.
“Right here,” I muttered as well as I could because my face was pressed to his shirt.
Time’s Teeth, the way he’d grabbed me…
A sigh. “I thought you were leaving,” March said, and I’d figured that much. This, too, made my heart break and mend at the same time within the second.
“I’m not.”
His arms around me loosened a little so I could breathe freely. I sniffed in his scent, roses and rain and something so authentically him I would recognize it among a million identical copies.
“Up long?”
My toes curled at the nuance of his voice. I’d never heard him speaking right after he woke up. It was incredibly sexy.
So much so that my stomach twisted and turned, and heat poured all over my body.
“A few seconds, probably. What time is it?” I wondered, because I was too busy raising my head to sniff his neck better.
A moan unlike any other I’d heard from him so far, and March pulled me closer, raised up his head a little to give me better access.
“Almost five,” he muttered. “You’re so warm and soft. So fucking soft…”
His hand slipped underneath my tunic and he touched my bare back. I sucked in a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut as he caressed my shoulders.
Then he brought his hand on my waist, and my stomach. I bit his neck to keep from moaning, too. That’s all it took—his hand on my bare skin, and I was already shaking—when I just woke up.
He made it easy. Too easy when he tasted so damn delicious. His skin between my teeth was everything.
The growl that came out of him vibrated on the surface of my skin. A second later, March pushed me down on the bed, his hand still under my tunic, around my waist, and he leaned over me halfway.
“Don’t do that,” he breathed against my lips, but he didn’t even mean it. He liked it when I bit his neck as much as I did.
I grabbed his face, brought him closer until our lips met. My thigh was still pressed to the front of him, so I felt his hard erection instantly.
That was fast.
Just as fast as that heat that had spread between my legs.
“Ora…” March whispered between my kisses—a warning.
“This is our last night in The Ever,” I reminded him again.
“It is.” He brought his forehead to mine. “Tomorrow we’ll be free of this place.”
I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the stabs at my heart. “Tomorrow we’ll be on our way back home.”
March was practically on top of me, so I felt it when his every muscle locked.
I said, “We’ll never see each other again,” hoping maybe it would sound less awful when it was out there in the world.
It didn’t.
“So that’s it? You just used me during the trials and now you plan to never see me again?” March raised his head, and there was a smile on his face, yes, but I knew him. I knew there was a part of him that really asked that question, without joking. A part of him that…was missing.
His trust.
“I never used you,” I whispered, though maybe I was hoping to that night I went to his room. I still didn’t. “And it doesn’t matter what I plan, does it? We live on opposite sides of the realm.”
“But we’re still in the realm. Same realm, same timeline,” March said, and when I closed my eyes, he nudged my nose with his to get me to look at him again. “It’s barely a day’s travel to your court. I’d travel years.”
My heart squeezed and squeezed, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in my room.
I touched his cheeks, ran my fingers over the tips so this long lashes. “That’s unrealistic. We have lives. We…we have family.”
“And we’ll always have our family no matter where they are,” March said, like it was the most natural thing in the world to say. The most normal thing.
“We can’t just travel all the time! That’s unrealistic, March, it’s—”
“Doable,” he cut me off. “It’s doable. And it’s not all the time. There’s plenty of space for an extra person in both your court and mine, isn’t there? There’s plenty of space in Neverwhen.”
Neverwhen.
The city of Timekeepers, of Clockfolk who wanted to pursue big careers. Of Clockfolk who started families with subjects of other courts.
“March.” I warned him this time. Because what he was saying was absurd. All I’d dreamed about in secret, when I was completely detached from myself.
What he was saying was…big.
“Unless that isn’t what you want. Unless you really aren’t planning to see me again.” He leaned back. Looked at me. “I can live with that. Just tell me.”
My mouth opened and closed and opened and closed. “You are a fool, Heartling.” A bigger fool than I’d ever realized if he really thought I could plan to not see him again.
He smiled a little—because he knew. Deep down he knew exactly what it was like inside my head. He knew that I might not have compassion right now, but I still craved him like he was life. I still would travel decades if it meant seeing him just for a while.
“There are ways to hold on. This isn’t the end,” he said. “There have to be ways.”
“There are.” All those ways he himself just told me about.
And there was hope there—right there in the center of my chest.
“It just feels like the last time anything belongs to us to in this place,” he whispered. A kiss on my forehead, and one on the tip of my nose.
“It isn’t,” I said, much too hopeful too suddenly—but the damage was already done. “We’ll always belong to this night, at least.”
“We will,” March said, his eyes lighting up a little bit.
“Kiss me,” I whispered when his lips hovered over mine a second too long.
“Are you sure?” he asked, so I showed him.
Gathering all my strength, I pushed him to the side hard, and he didn’t see it coming so he couldn’t stop me.
The next second, he was on his back in the middle of my bed and I was on top of him.
“The last night,” I whispered, his face in my hands, my lips on his. “I want to remember the last night.”
March wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me in.
Our kiss was frantic at first. Desperate as the weight of reality settled under our skins, became part of us.
Our hands were everywhere on each other’s bodies.
We breathed at the same speed, moved our hips against each other with the same urgency.
His hardness between my legs made it impossible to keep quiet.
I called out his name when I could, and he whispered mine, and it was the perfect melody to make this night unforgettable.
Then we slowed down, the need to taste each other, explore each other, know every line and shape of each other’s bodies winning over the fear of the future. We spun around, sometimes March on top of me, and sometimes I on top of him, but we never stopped kissing. Never stopped touching.
Minutes or hours later, he was on top of me when I pushed back his shoulders a little, and he knew to spin us on the bed.
I let go of his lips for a moment, sat up on his hips, the hard length of his cock pressed right between my folds.
Clothes on the way, though. Too many clothes.
I pulled off my tunic in one movement, threw it to the side, and as I reached to unclasp my bra, March’s hands were all over my torso, his eyes bloodshot as he watched me, like he was hypnotized.
When my bra ended up discarded to the side, too, he sat up, wrapped his arms around me, and replaced his hands with his mouth.
I whispered his name, raised to my knees as much as he let me to give him better access to my breasts, lost in ecstasy as I pushed and pulled at his hair, moved my hips, searching for friction.
He must have known because he brought a hand between my legs and touched me over my leggings, driving me close to the brink lightning fast.
But I needed more.
I wanted all of him one more time, no matter what the future was going to look like.
I didn’t even care what would happen to us in the last trial—I wanted to live in this more than ever before.
So I pulled up his shirt and took it off him, then pushed him down on the bed again so I could look at him, touch him, memorize his every detail with my mouth.
His hands were in my hair. He pulled and pushed me whichever way he liked, held me in place where he needed as I licked every inch of his chest, bit and sucked to leave marks as best as I could.
I didn’t even understand where this need to claim him came from, but I had no desire to control it when the taste of his skin was made for my tongue.
Time’s Teeth, he was perfection—and that’s even before I went lower.
I pulled his sweatpants and underwear down at once while I kissed around his belly button, and the tip of his hard cock touched my nipple as I moved. The sensation was so incredible, so electric, I cried out.
When I grabbed him in both my hands, March pulled at my hair harder but held me in place, raised up his head and watched me playing.