Chapter 34 #2
I startle a little when Leth opens her mouth, and a sound pours out that’s remarkably like the purr of a humongous cat.
I laugh, delighted. She’s happy. And despite all that has happened today—despite the fresh memory of Whistler, despite Chase’s near-death, and my unexpected betrothal—in this moment, so am I.
We bank over the desert, and the castle drops behind us, making it seem as if we’re alone in this dangerous realm that I once feared.
Now, it’s mine. And isn’t that one hell of a strange feeling?
I don’t notice how close I’ve settled against Adric until I feel his hair tickling my cheek. “You were born for this,” he says. “Not just dragon-riding but the height. The altitude. The power.”
“Hello? Human.”
“Perhaps. But you were meant to be more. Stay with me, and you will have it all.”
I don’t answer, just tighten my grip on his waist as reality hits me—I may have agreed to marry this man, but that doesn’t mean I’m bound to the castle or its grounds like he is. I can go back—to Tia, to school, to the world that I know and love. Hell, I can come and go as I please.
I have a choice.
It is, I think, the first true choice I’ve ever had.
I let the air take some of the weight I’ve been carrying, and I laugh, suddenly lighter than I’ve felt in my life, and Leth answers with a tilt that makes the moons skid across the edge of the world.
It feels like hours have passed when Adric squeezes my knee, and I feel a stab of regret before he even speaks. “We should go back.”
I don’t argue, and Leth wheels into a long, smooth descent. We touch down with a soft thud, and I swing my leg over and slide to the stone. Leth lowers her head, and I press my palm there. “Thank you,” I whisper.
Her silver eyes meet mine. Then she huffs and slips off the terrace into the shadow-black of night.
I only realize I’m smiling when the tug of Adric’s hand pulls me to him, and his mouth closes over mine. I melt into this kiss, thinking of Chase and desperately wishing I didn’t want the man who’s holding me.
But at the same time, knowing this is exactly how I wanted the evening to end.
The kiss is wild. Demanding. Stealing both breath and reason, and I kiss him back just as fiercely. My hands fist in his hair, and heat floods through me, pooling low in my belly as I make a sound I don’t recognize. Want. Need. The two tangle together until I can’t tell them apart.
He tastes like the air up there—high and clean and dangerous, and when his teeth catch my lower lip, a pulse goes through me so bright I have to grab his shoulder to stay upright.
“Adric.” I murmur his name against his mouth, both protest and plea, and his answer is to kiss me harder, then pull away as if he, too, realizes that if we don’t stop now, we won’t stop ever.
We stand with our foreheads touching, both breathing hard. His thumb traces my ear, slow enough to be a question. And the answer? One long, desperate yes.
That’s why I step back. Not far. Just far enough to remember that I kissed another man a few hours ago and told him I loved him. And that I meant those words.
But my body doesn’t get the memo. Even as my brain is composing the goodbye, I lean toward him, wishing I could say what my body is begging. But I can’t. “I have to go back,” I whisper, and I hate how raw it sounds. “Chase.”
“I know,” he says. He lifts his hands like he’s admitting to the crime of wanting. He drops them before he makes it worse. “He needs you.”
“Do you?” I ask, shocked by my boldness.
“You already know the answer.”
I dip my head to study the ground. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asks, his voice rough.
“For letting me touch the sky.”
“Stay with me, and Leth will be yours. Companion. Friend. An escape when you need one.”
I don’t answer. I’ve agreed to the betrothal, not to abandon my life. Not to live in the Nightmare Realm.
And not to abandon Chase. “I love him,” I whisper. What I don’t say is that I think I might love Adric too. But that’s something I’m not ready to figure out. Right now, I can wrap my mind around wanting him. That’s plenty confusing for the moment.
“I know,” he says, but whether he means that he knows about how I feel about Chase or about him, I don’t know.
Right now, I don’t care. Not with his hand sliding to the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin behind my ear.
Then he waits. Giving me the space to say no.
To be the good girl who makes the right choice.
Instead, I lean in, and though we’d just shared a kiss, he claims my mouth as if he’d been starving for it.
I grab his shoulders for balance, and he pulls me flush against him so that I can feel every hard plane of his body, the heat of him seeping through my riding outfit.
When his tongue sweeps into my mouth, I taste something dark and sweet, like forbidden fruit.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine, both of us lost in the moment. The terrace is empty around us, just stone and moonlight choices and possibility.
I should go check on Chase. But he has a healer watching over him, and my body is still humming from the flight and the kiss and the way I felt pressed against Adric. A wild, heated need that’s been building since the moment he opened his door in that robe.
No, before that. Since that first kiss in the dream. He offered me everything then, including power he couldn’t offer, because it was already inside me.
I’ve found it now, and with a small smile, I step back. “Watch,” I say, remembering the garden in the Neutral Zone. Remembering how it felt when that power flowed through me.
I extend my hand, reaching for that strength. That magic. And I can practically hear Adric’s pride as the tent forms in front of us like something out of a nomadic prince’s dream, all flowing silk in deep burgundy and gold with soft carpets layered thick, and cushions scattered everywhere.
I glance back to find Adric watching me with an expression of pride mixed with hunger.
“Ours,” I say as he strides to me, radiating a sensual heat that ignites the need that’s been twisting inside me.
Without a word, he takes my hand, and lifts my fingers to his lips, his silver eyes on mine as he kisses my hand.
“Ours,” he repeats. “And you are mine. His hand presses against my lower back, his body so close I can feel his heat.
“I want you,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intend. “But I need you to understand something.”
He inches even closer. “I’m listening.”
“I love Chase,” I say, the words tumbling out, fierce and certain.
“That won’t change, and I will not give him up unless he demands it.
But I want you too—I can’t pretend I don’t.
So unless Chase says otherwise, I’m his, too.
” I draw myself up straighter. “I’ll go through the betrothal ceremony with you, because I can’t stand that you’re a prisoner in your own realm. ”
“Thank you.” The words are barely a whisper. “I sense a but coming on.”
“You’re a very smart man,” and despite the bombshell I’m about to drop—one I expect he anticipates—we share a small smile.
“I will marry you if you insist. But I refuse to be the cause of the barriers coming down. I know what you believe, and I respect that you think it’s right. But I don’t. I trust Chase,” I add, and see him wince.
I stand straighter, “If you do insist that we marry, I will never sleep with you again. The barriers will stay as they are. And I will live my life in the Realm of the Real because I want that life. I want my friends. And I want to help Chase fight your mares who’ve escaped into that realm.”
I draw a breath, unable to read his expression. “But mostly I want to be away from you, so that I’m not tempted to break that vow.”
He tilts his head, as if he’s searching my words for loopholes.
Part of me hopes he’ll find one.
When he stays silent, I lift a shoulder. “Those are my conditions. You’ll be free to move beyond the castle and its grounds, but you won’t have me like that. Only your brother will.”
I glance down, knowing that the last may prove to be a lie. I don’t want to lose Chase, but he might walk away from me once he learns of this deal. And about me and Adric tonight.
The truth is, I’m terrified. I’m playing on a cosmic scale. Me, the girl who failed her first semester of high school physics.
And yet it feels right. As if this mysterious power in me knows what it’s doing.
“I accept,” Adric says, taking my hands and tugging me to him. “But know this, my Queen. I want you in my bed. And I will have you. Even after we’re wed.”
“One of us is wrong,” I tell him.
“And for the time being, the point is moot. Tomorrow is the betrothal ceremony. As for the wedding itself? Well, we have no date set for that, do we, my love?”
“No,” I say, with the whisper of a smile.
“You should go check on my brother,” he says. “But after that, come back to me.”
I nod, then start to turn away. “No,” he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me back to claim me with the kind of kiss that makes me think I’m melting. And that perhaps this strange arrangement will work.
That I’ll have both men, albeit with conditions. That the barriers will stay up.
That we’ll all have a happily ever after.
He breaks the kiss, and for a moment, he just looks . Then one hand slides into my hair, the other gripping my hip hard and tugging me against him.
“I should go check on Chase.”
“Let him sleep. We have plans.”
“Plans?”
“Time may be infinite,” he murmurs. “But we should never waste it.” Then his mouth closes over mine in a kiss different from the one after the flight.
That one was exploration. This one is conquering.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth, and I make a sound I don’t recognize, my hands fisting in his shirt.
He tastes like night air and something darker, something that makes heat bloom low in my belly and spread outward until my skin feels too tight.