Chapter Twenty-Nine
Idon’t have to tell him twice.
Kaelen bends his head and touches his lips to mine. So gently, almost featherlight, as if asking for the permission I already gave. As if asking for the trust he already won.
I put my arms around his neck and pull him closer, wanting nothing but his touch, his taste, the feel of his body against mine. He captures the sides of my face with his hands, staring down at me with his bottomless purple eyes.
“I can offer you nothing, Soli. I’m the prince of nowhere—a man without a country. I can’t deserve you.”
Laughter sings in my heart and escapes my lips. “You’re my prince. I deserve to have something for me, for once in my life. I want you. I choose you. And maybe just for tonight, we can agree that we deserve each other. Kiss me, Kaelen. Make me feel wanted.”
“How can you feel anything else when you’re near me? I spend what feels like every minute of every hour trying to keep my hands off you,” he growls, frustration tightening his face.
“Then stop trying,” I demand, imperious, as if I have any right to make demands of this man. This prince.
Of anyone.
“As you command, my lady,” he murmurs, and then takes my mouth with all the heat and passion I’ve craved without knowing it for my entire life. Desire is a flash fire racing through my veins, turning my blood to flame, turning my body to an aching conflagration of desire.
I wonder how I lived without his kisses for so long.
He tastes like honey mead and heat and want, and his lips are soft but firm. His tongue is driving me over an edge I never saw coming; he’s tasting me, and I’m tasting him, and I never, ever want this to end.
I want everything.
To hold him and kiss him and consume him.
To be consumed in return.
To take and give and take again, until the bottomless need inside me is finally filled, finally sated, finally overflowing with the intensity of this feeling.
Time slows and stops and races forward. He’s holding me so tightly I can feel his hard body imprinted on mine.
I run my hands up his muscled arms and touch his neck, the sides of his face, his silky hair.
Still kissing him. Still being kissed by him.
Drunk on sensation, on desire, on primal, powerful, passionate need so strong that I almost believe I can smell flowers surrounding us with the scent of spring.
Suddenly, Kaelen pulls back, panting, and stares at me with wild eyes. “How is this possible? How can I need you more than breath, or hope, or honor? I can’t do this. The quest—”
“The quest?” I’m dazed with sensation, dizzy with want.
His eyes darken, and in an instant, his expression changes.
Turns feral.
“Fuck the quest,” he growls, yanking me up to my feet and into his arms. Capturing my mouth with burning possession.
He wants me.
I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on, looking wildly around when he lets me catch a breath, and I don’t know how to comprehend what’s happening to me right now, right here, in this ocean of flowers and sea of wheat and …
Flowers and wheat.
“Kaelen!”
He blinks, and the almost dazed expression I’m sure mirrors mine disappears. He’s instantly every inch the warrior as he scans the surrounding area. “What? Where?”
I grab his head and tilt it to look down at the ground. “There.”
His gaze moves from the ground to my face, to the amulet—which still glows, but less brightly—and then up to the moonlit sky illuminating the field.
The field of growing plants where there had been nothing but burned stubble before.
Flowers grow right before our eyes in a perimeter several paces from the now lush and fertile soil beneath and around us.
“Is that wheat?”
We spin around, staring at the field.
“What?”
“Is that wheat?” I repeat. “I … Is it possible … How is this possible?”
Kaelen bends and plucks a stalk from a still-growing plant and silently holds it up between us.
“It’s wheat.” I hesitate and then reach for it. “Yes. Feels like wheat. Smells like … What is happening?”
His gaze drops to the glowing amulet between us. “I think the better question is who is happening. Looks like Artemisen is stretching her powers. She returned balance to the land by regrowing the fields burned by the Fell.”
The flowers—marigolds and bluebells and dahlias—circling us now reach my knees, their blooms bursting open in a surreal, sped-up version of the time they’d normally need to grow from seed to flower.
The wheat is even taller.
Suddenly, I realize we’re standing in the middle of an impossible, magical, fast-growing field, and I’m wearing the goddess’s necklace that made it possible.
“The villagers won’t understand this,” I say slowly. “We need to get out of here.”
He nods, face turning grim. “We don’t have time to be captured or killed for sorcery. Khyrrans aren’t fans of magic, and we wouldn’t easily be able to convince them this is Artemisen’s doing. Will the amulet let you leave now?”
I take a tentative step and then another. “No resistance at all.” I sigh with relief and tuck the locket back beneath my shirt. The glow is fading, too. “Let’s go.”
We have to shove our way through thick stalks of thigh-high wheat to get back to the road. Once there, we stare in disbelief at the formerly burned fields on the other side of the road, now bursting with crops that look almost ready to harvest.
“At this rate, they’ll have a full harvest by tomorrow.” Kaelen whistles. “Yes, definitely time to find our way back to the inn, and better for us if nobody sees us doing it.”
He suddenly laughs, pulls me to him, and kisses me. “Never a dull day with you, Solitude Grace.”
“I could say the same, Prince Kaelen Valourian.” I tug at his hand. “But we have to go.”
Somehow, we make it back to the inn without being seen. Maybe Artemisen has a hand in this, too.
Kaelen leads us to the back of the building, where we enter the unbarred door to the kitchen.
The room is empty and the stove is cold, a clear sign the cook is done for the night.
There’s a narrow staircase from the kitchen up to the guest rooms, probably for the servants to use, and Kaelen pulls me along behind him, his hand gripping mine.
When we pass the door to my room without stopping, I whisper a protest. “That’s mine. Don’t you think—”
“No. I definitely don’t,” he says, determination clear in his quiet voice. “You asked me to touch you, remember? I feel like I haven’t fulfilled that request to the best of my ability yet.”
When he pushes open the door at the end of the empty hallway, he glances back at me, his beautiful eyes filled with heat. “Unless you’ve changed your mind. Please tell me now. Once I have you all to myself in that room, I intend to keep you for as long as you’ll let me.”
“I—”
“Naked.”
Heat flames up my chest into my face, but I hold his gaze. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
Before I can move or think or even breathe, he yanks me into his arms, strides into the room, and kicks the door shut behind us.
Suddenly, his mouth is on mine, the door is at my back, and his hard, hot body is pressed against me, while his hands grasp my hips and lift me up.
I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist, remembering that we stood exactly like this in the trees.
Just before he pushed me away.
The thought chills my desire enough that I look down and take a long, shaky breath. “Are you sure this time? Before—”
“Soli.” He lifts my chin gently. “I’m sorry. I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“And now?”
His seductive grin is filled with wicked delight. “And now I’m going to be a bandit.”
I can’t help but laugh and tighten my arms around him. “What do bandits do?”
“Bandits,” he says, kissing his way up my neck to my ear and gently biting the lobe, “ravish.”