Chapter 15 Was That Slow Enough? #2
Kat felt her face scrunch up with a very specific kind of anger, one she held onto deep inside and wasn’t sure she was allowed to have. “So? You’re an adult, you can do whatever you want.”
His gaze roved down to her feet and then back up. “If only that were true.” Then he clapped. “Now, I presume there’s a reason you came all the way to this side of Heck and climbed up my tree? Or are you so enamored of me you just couldn’t keep away?”
Kat scowled at him, which made the next part a little easier, though remembering why she came sent a jolt of fear all the way down to her toes. “I want to apologize.” Nope, that wasn’t it. But it was a start. “For what happened at the wedding.”
He cocked his head. “What…happened?”
“Well, not what happened. What didn’t happen.”
“Katarina, I must say, that tells me even less.”
Kat looked fixedly at the floor. “The whole…kiss thing.”
“Oh.” Azrion drew out the sound, and it encircled her like being seen from every angle, the way her face reddened, the way her fingers twitched, the way her knees pinched.
“Yeah, that.” She watched what was left of her tea begin to tremble in the cup. The cup he painted. Oh, hells, I suppose I have to tell him the whole truth. “I’ve never—well, I have kissed someone before, but…”
Azrion said nothing, letting the unfinished words linger all the way up to the high ceiling of his studio.
“They said I wasn’t very good at it,” she admitted all at once.
Azrion made a sound, but before Kat could decipher it, she barreled through.
“I just haven’t had many opportunities to try, and there are only a few things I’m really good at anyway, so I knew I wasn’t going to magically improve at something like that without practice, and I didn’t want to embarrass you by doing it badly in front of everyone, and also I was just scared, but I thought if maybe—” She ran out then, of breath, of courage, and everything else too.
“Maybe what?”
Kat couldn’t even swallow.
Azrion slipped the teacup out of her grip and placed it on a nearby table along with his journal. The clink of the ceramic echoed too loudly into the silence of the room, but her heart made up for it, thumping in her ears so similarly to wood being chopped at a distance.
Fingers touched her chin and tipped her head up. Kat let him because it took everything to hold herself back, to hold in the plea that he help her, the fear that she would never get it right, the embarrassment she had to ask at all.
“What did you think, Katarina?” Azrion’s eyes were wholly black, but they were far from empty.
“I thought if I came here, then maybe…” She flexed her fingers and found her skirt, gripping the fabric painfully. “Maybe we could practice.”
“You want to practice kissing? With me?”
Oh gods, when he says it like that… Kat tried to turn away, but Azrion grabbed her with a delicate hold, just enough to keep her there before him.
She might have wanted to shrink away, but she didn’t because the truth was stronger—yes, she did want to practice kissing and with him specifically.
So through her anxious stiffness and her pounding heart and her made-up mind, Kat nodded.
Azrion’s jaw ticked with the ghost of a smile that he quickly put away. His touch shifted so that his hands rested on her shoulders. “Close your eyes,” he said. “That will make it easier.”
She was so quick to comply, he chuckled, and she realized she was squeezing all her features together and had pursed her lips too for good measure. “Oh, gods,” she groaned, slumping because she was too wound up to flee.
“Ah, no, stay here, stay focused.” He tilted her head up again, and she nodded weakly.
“Eyes closed but do it slowly, like you’re settling down in bed for a long night.
That’s right. Relax your brow.” He drew a finger over the wrinkles she’d made in her forehead, and her skin untensed.
“Now soften your jaw.” His touch roved down her cheek to caress just below her ear, and she felt that go loose too.
“And count in your mind to, let’s say, six. ”
One…
It was going to be okay.
Two…
She still had four whole numbers to get through.
Three…
He would do all the work, and she would just—
Lips.
Grazing and then pressing.
And then they were gone.
Kat waited in case there was more…four…five…and then she opened her eyes.
Everything was the same. Azrion stood just before her, his hands still gently gripped her shoulders, she still clutched her skirt like she depended on it for air, and yet she had been kissed.
“You didn’t wait until six,” she mumbled through lips that had been changed and yet weren’t.
“And you didn’t over anticipate. And least not much more than you were already going to.”
Kat’s hand twitched like it might come up and brush over her lips, but she kept gripping her skirt for dear life. “Did I do it right?”
Azrion grinned. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It seemed…short.”
He cocked a brow. “Are you asking for a longer one?”
Kat opened her mouth, but she couldn’t admit that yes, she was, and maybe not just for practice. She managed the smallest nod and thanked all the gods when Azrion leaned in.
She kept her eyes open for the second kiss, watching the demon’s lids fall into narrow slits as he closed the distance between their mouths.
The next attempt wasn’t a simple peck. Azrion’s lips took her bottom one between his and closed on it.
He pressed into her, just enough so that she rocked backward slightly, and a shiver ran down her entire body.
Instinct told Kat to lean in too, to press back, to open her lips wider. But her instinct had been wrong about this before, so she simply stood there, stiff and awkward. But a small sound slipped out of her throat when he pulled back, a sound she’d only made in private before.
Azrion’s tongue darted out over his lips, and she saw the wetness of her own on them before he licked it away. He inhaled slowly, chest expanding just before her. He’d come closer, and she hadn’t noticed, not that she objected. In fact, the only thing she objected to was him pulling back at all.
“There,” he said, voice barely a rumble. “Would you like to try now?”
There wasn’t weakness to Kat’s next nod, and however embarrassing her enthusiasm might have been, Azrion didn’t show his amusement. He only leaned in again, head slightly tilted, lips parted, eyes closed.
Kat used the moment to inspect his mouth, the way the darker purple of his lips looked plump like blackberries, how the sliver she could see of his tongue shimmered wetly inside, how she knew there were fangs hiding amongst his teeth.
Flexing fingers finally released her skirt and rose, and she laid a palm on his chest, maybe for protection or maybe to hold herself back, and then she leaned in.
Azrion’s bottom lip was even riper than it looked. She mimicked what he had done, pushing forward into his mouth, but then her fingers were curling into his shirt, and she was pushing even harder, mouth opening wider but not to pull away.
Azrion let her, lips moving in response, somehow in sync yet faster. His grip on her arms changed, a hand sliding down to her lower back instead, tugging her closer. And then Kat remembered she had to breathe.
She broke away, leaving him hanging. With a ragged inhale, her eyes flew open, though she wasn’t sure when they’d closed. She could taste him still—would never stop tasting him, she knew—and her heartbeat pounded in her lips.
“G-good,” Azrion said, a quiver to his voice as he blinked. “That was very good.”
Kat straightened like a god had commanded it of her. “Was it?”
He nodded with fervor. He was still holding her, her fingers still twisted into his shirt, and the warmth of their bodies was making the chamber feel very small. “Would you like to—”
Kat launched herself at Azrion, mouth open and crashing into his with abandon, but there was no attempt to comment or correct. Azrion only tightened his grip as she wrapped both arms around his neck to get as close as she could, to try and climb inside him and stay.
Maybe this was kissing, maybe it was something else, but whatever their mouths and tongues—oh, gods our tongues—were doing, it made Kat absolutely ravenous.
She pressed every inch of herself against him, breasts, stomach, hips, driven on by the nip of one of his fangs.
She bit him back, and when a noise rumbled out of his chest, she moaned into his mouth like she had just come apart for the first time.
And then the world shook.
They pulled back from their shared frenzy, alarm painting both faces.
Kat had read about the world shaking when people kissed, but not like this, not like an actual quake in the earth and certainly not with a sound filling her ears like the air itself had split open.
“What was that?” Kat asked like Azrion might have a kiss-related answer.
“Nothing good,” he said, gaze flicking to the massive windows, and then he took her by the hand and dragged her out of the studio. They hurried through the house and out onto the porch. The gardens looked utterly serene, but another terrible sound lit up the sky.
“Az!” A feminine voice called from the garden.
Azrion pulled Kat down the stairs. “We’re here,” he called as they slipped between the trees. “Everything’s fine.”
“You shouldn’t be outside. The distress runes—oh, hello.”
Kat recognized the demon who appeared from around a bend in the pathway, though she knew she shouldn’t have. She’d been the subject of Azrion’s most sorrowful sketch, and now that there was a pale purple color to her, it was obvious who she was.
“If I shouldn’t be outside, neither should you, mother.” Azrion gestured to the outdoors, and they all froze as another crack somewhere off in the city shook the ground.
“Oh, never mind, just come inside. Your father made more than enough for dinner.” She wound her hand and turned back the way she’d come.
“Ah, well, I think I might walk Katarina home—”
“Not during an attack,” she hissed. “Come on, both of you. Inside, now.”