Chapter Twelve #3
I don’t know what I want.
“Yes,” he says.
I feel a faint pulse of his magic, and I’m not sure if he’s reaching for his power or for something else entirely. I run my finger over the edge of a stone pot, its surface rough to the touch.
“What happened?”
“I—” He swallows. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
His next words are sharper. “I mean, nothing. No one came to take care of them. And I thought—I knew that. I believed that I knew that.”
“You hoped they might, anyway?”
Lark looks away. He bends his face down, and his hair hides his expression from view. I round the bench in the centre of the room and he doesn’t look up even when I stand before him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“For this? This is not—”
“For all of it. We’ve trapped you here.” Trapped him like all the plants in this room, maybe. I still want to be angry with him. No, I still am angry with him, but not for this. And it’s harder to hold onto that anger as I get more pieces of who he truly is.
“I could have said no.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He presses his lips together. I reach out tentatively, and when I touch his hand, he doesn’t pull away.
“We should rest,” I murmur. “Grant says some fae are coming by later to help us with our clothes.”
“Very well.”
He hesitates for a moment, and there’s the slightest tremble in his fingers before he takes my hand. The touch is feather-light, but I follow him anyway, breathing a little easier once the door to the greenhouse closes behind us.
“I’ll—I can sleep on the sofa,” I say.
“No,” Lark says, and when I look at him in surprise, his gaze darts away again. “It is not—Of course I want you in my bed, but it is not just that. The servants may well arrive before you wake. It will look suspicious if you are out there alone.”
He’s already steering me into the bedroom, and I have to admit that the bed looks inviting. Lark lets go of my hand, only to move his to my lower back. He propels me in the direction of the bed.
“I can sleep on the floor,” he says, but I’m already shaking my head.
“It’s your bed.” And it’s big enough for two. And as anxiety-inducing and exciting as sleeping in the same bed as him is—especially after I want you in my bed, because, what the fuck?—I’m too exhausted for any of that.
“Get undressed,” Lark says, even quieter, and heat prickles my skin even as I know he doesn’t mean it like that. I kick off my shoes and pull off my jumper, and when I glance over, Lark is already down to his underwear.
Okay, maybe not too exhausted. My mouth goes dry and heat sweeps through me.
Without his glamour, his skin seems to shimmer in the low light, iridescent patterns flowing over him, and I can’t tell if I can only see them because they’re magical or if I’d be able to see them anyway.
Broad shoulders taper to a narrow waist and slender, long legs that—
Lark lifts his head. He sees me looking. His eyes roam over me in turn, but I’m still standing there in my T-shirt and jogging bottoms, and I reflexively wrap my arms around my middle.
I don’t look like that. I don’t look anything close to that, and I’m aware of it in a startling shock of a way, so much so that I almost can’t catch my breath.
Lark comes closer. He gently tugs on my arms, then catches the hem of my T-shirt and pulls it up.
My cheeks flame, eyes hot and stinging as he drags it over my head and tosses it aside.
I don’t think of how I look much, most of the time.
My pack is full of so many different people who look so many different ways, but there’s no hidden physical strength in my round stomach or big thighs.
“What has you so worried?” Lark murmurs. His fingers stroke gently just above my waistband. “You need rest.”
“I-I know, I—” I don’t know how to explain it to him. I don’t want to. “Lark!”
He steps in even closer and wraps his arms around me, pressing us chest to chest. His heart beats faster than mine. I didn’t know that about the fae.
“You are—” The words catch in his throat, and I blink back hot tears. I’m too tired. I wouldn’t be this weak, this vulnerable, if I’d rested. Lark’s whole body trembles. “You have nothing you should be ashamed of. Come. We should sleep.”
I nod, biting my lip to keep my emotions to myself.
It’s not enough. And it’s not his fault; I can’t make him say things he doesn’t believe.
He literally can’t do that, which I’ve always fantasised as some fun character trait to have in a boyfriend—if he told me he thought I was hot, or he loved me, there’d be no way he was lying—but he can’t even say it.
“Yeah, okay,” I say and step away from him to take off my joggers myself. I leave them where they fall and then crawl into the bed and at least I’m right about one thing. It’s incredibly comfortable.
The mattress dips when Lark climbs in beside me. He shuffles a little closer, and I tense when he wraps an arm around my middle, but I don’t push him away. I don’t want to. His fingers trace patterns over my skin.
“Sleep,” he murmurs. “We will fix it all when we wake again.”