Chapter 17
~17~
C illian froze, his mouth so close to Alise’s upturned lips, already so tempting, even without the glittering challenge in her luminous eyes. He wanted to kiss her, of course, had thought of little else, but the ghost of Szarina hung in the air between them like one of Alise’s cloaking spirits. None of us needs another Szarina incident. “Alise…” he said, voice faint.
Disappointed irritation snapped into her gaze. “Fine. If it’s too much to ask, forget it.” She yanked out of his grip and lunged for the door.
Growling with a frustration that was an echo of hers, he leapt before her, preventing her from reaching her exit, and somehow ended up with her pushed against the wall. She stared at him in shock, eyes wide and dark. With his hands on her slim waist, he became keenly aware of the thrumming of her nerves, her narrow ribs flaring with hard, fast breaths, her heart pounding in a rhythm to match his own. “Are you sure?” he breathed, his lips already lowering to her tempting mouth, wanting, needing.
“Yes. You are the one hesitating.” She slid her hands up his chest, making him shudder. How many times had he fantasized about her touching him exactly this way? Tipping her head to the side, her lips curved into a sensual, challenging smile, and she dug her short nails lightly into his skin through his shirt. “You know you want to.”
He did. Abandoning all good sense, he loosed his restraint and closed the brief distance, pulling her hard against him and relishing her gasp of surprised desire, along with the delicious feel of her slight body, so delicate and yet blossoming with magic. A contrast there, between the birdlike bones of her petite frame and the robust power of the magic contained there. It billowed around and through him, roses in brilliant shades of scarlet and crimson and a bloodred nearly black, bursting into bloom, sunshine dancing over his skin and permeating his bones.
Kissing her, holding her, felt like embracing the font of life. Like a hot summer afternoon, she infiltrated him, illuminating the dusty corridors of his scholar’s mind and magic. He felt as if he, himself, might burgeon into someone hotter, more vibrant, charismatic, and full of shimmering life. In Alise’s arms, it seemed, he could become anyone at all.
Slowing, realizing he could relax, that no one would happen upon them, not like before with the frenzied, forbidden rush of the stolen kiss in the library, certain in the knowledge that she wanted this too, he allowed himself to savor her. Alise melted against him, braced by the wall behind her, pulling him ever closer with clinging, urgent hands.
“Cillian…” she murmured against his lips, her breath a sweet sighing.
“Yes,” he answered, as if she’d asked a question. And perhaps she had. Her body fit just so against him, her curves and lines aligning with him, as if they’d been crafted precisely for one another, for this.
Drawing away just bit, Alise cupped his cheek and gazed up at him, her depthless eyes showing her shining, loving soul. They shimmered with trust, he realized.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked on a hushed breath.
“You can tell me anything,” he answered promptly.
“Do you know what frightened me most about Gordon Hanneil’s threats?” She searched his face, a wary hesitation in hers.
For her, he refused the immediate anger, wouldn’t allow the tension that wanted to flood his muscles. He’d obviously never been a fighter, always the boy with his nose in a book, so the raw, raging impulse to find Gordon Hanneil and beat him to a bloody pulp with his fists alarmed and shocked Cillian. He didn’t know how he’d accomplish it, but he could envision the moment. Not to murder him, but to punish and disable. Gordon Hanneil would face Convocation justice. As would House Hanneil. Cillian would see to it.
But for her, he set all that aside and stayed loose, embracing the woman he loved more than all the world, giving her what she needed. “What?” he asked, just as softly. Whatever haunted her, he would listen. He could give her that much.
“That… Well, if he’d made good on his threat, to twist my mind against me, and…” She stopped, chewing her lip, hesitating over the words.
“You don’t have to say it aloud,” he told her, understanding. “I know what you mean.”
She nodded in relief. “That he would have been my first. Sex. You know. Pretty much first everything. And I didn’t want that.”
“It wouldn’t have been sex. What he threatened you with was violence and violation.”
She smiled, slightly, fingers caressing his cheek. “You know what I mean. Physical intimacy.”
“Yes.” He suspected he knew where she was going with this. And he didn’t know what his answer would be. Should be. Caught between his longing and his caution, the only thing he could say was her name. Her beloved, lyrical, and lovely name. “Alise…”
“I want it to be you,” she said simply, easing out from between him and the wall, taking his hand and leading him toward the bedroom.
“I thought your demands included only gingerbread and a kiss,” he joked weakly, still profoundly torn, his body eager, his heart overflowing, and his mind whispering urgent cautions. This was a bad idea. The wrong thing to do. Except he couldn’t quite remember why.
Alise glanced back over her shoulder at his poor joke, and paused, a slight frown of concern marring her clear forehead, drawing a line between her winged black brows. “I’d imagined the rest would follow on to the kiss-request. Do you not want to? Not want… me?”
“Oh, darling.” Still holding her hand, he eased closer, folding the distance he’d allowed to stretch between them. “I want you like I want air. Have done since the first time I laid eyes on you, since I first sensed the sweet bloom of your magic. But I worry.”
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t worry,” she observed solemnly, but with a glint of humor dancing in her black eyes.
“Fair,” he admitted. “Still, I have good reason. I need you to listen.”
“Tell me.” She turned to face him, listening with gratifying attention.
“I fear this is a reaction on your part,” he explained, cautious of eliciting her ire again. Or hurting her, accidentally making her feel rejected. “You didn’t want this from me before. Any of it. You barely thought of me as a friend, let alone as a lover. I’m concerned that your very real and understandable terror of what could have happened is driving you to take drastic action. That this isn’t something that you’d want, that you would ask from me, if you hadn’t been terrorized and traumatized.”
She waited a beat, making sure he’d finished, he realized. Then dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “I understand why you’d think that. And I can’t really argue otherwise. I don’t know why I didn’t fully see you before—except that it was as if I had been asleep. Those things I thought about before all this happened, that I believed were so very important, none of them matter now. You’re right: I didn’t see you as a lover. I held you at arm’s length as a friend because…”
“Because?” he prompted, when she didn’t finish.
She gave a little self-conscious shrug. “Because I liked you. Too much. And it worried me.”
“Oh, my darling.” He combed his fingers into her silky hair, his heart swelling when she tipped her cheek into his palm. “Whyever would that worry you? I’m harmless.”
“Maybe that’s why,” she said, a raw vulnerability in her face as she gazed at him. No walls around her heart now. “I’ve all my life been around dangerous people. I know how to ward against that, how to perform the political dance, how to strive for power and supremacy. What I don’t know is how to be… I don’t even know what word I want. Normal? Human, maybe. How to be someone besides the heir to a high house, a powerful something someday whose job it will be to rule and crush the people beneath me.”
His heart literally ached for her—or something in the vicinity of his chest did. “That’s not a requirement of the job,” he told her gently. “You can head a high house without doing that, being that.”
She snorted. “Show me one.”
“Nic and Gabriel. Jadren and Seliah. Lady Harahel.”
“Outcasts, iconoclasts, and scholars,” she replied, but not unkindly. “Still, your point is taken. And mine is that I don’t know why I didn’t see you, except that I didn’t see anything except for a difficult and narrow road ahead of me.” She laid her free hand over his heart. “But I see you now, and I want you, Cillian. I want you to make love to me and show me how. You are experienced, yes?”
“Yes,” he got out past his newly thundering heart which seemed to have jogged up in his chest to lodge at the base of his throat. He set aside the memories of Szarina that threatened to flood him and taint this far more precious moment with Alise. He refused to let her memory ruin this. “Are you sure?”
Her lips quirked in wry amusement. “Are you going to make me say it three times to seal the charm?”
“It would help, yes.”
“I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure.”
“I think there’s some extras in there.”
“Really, really sure.” Stepping away, she tugged at his hand, and he followed her willingly this time, though not without trepidation. It had been a while, after all.
“I might not be very good at it,” he felt he should say. Total honesty and all that. Mitigate her expectations. “I’m quite a bit rusty.”
The smile she flashed him held a dazzling affection. “I’m sure it’s like redirecting an air elemental powering a carriage. Once you learn, you never forget.”
“I was never terribly good at that,” he muttered, coming to a halt beside the bed, facing her. At least he habitually kept his room clean and his bed made. A stack of books on the bedside table, yes, and the stained-glass shade on the reading lamp had tilted askew at some point. Funny that he hadn’t noticed it before.
“Like reading, then,” she amended with a knowing smile.
“I can’t remember a time I couldn’t read,” he agreed. As opposed to those first few fumbling attempts with Szarina, who’d mocked his clumsiness and ignorance. Don’t think about her, he instructed himself fiercely. She has no place in this bed.
“Well then, this will be the same.” Alise went to unbutton her shirt.
“Wait. Let me do that.”
Curious, she dropped her hands, watching him with those wide, dark eyes.
“First things first,” he told her, giving her a kiss that he’d meant to be brief, but turned lingering. Would kissing her ever feel like not a transgression, not something stolen and furtive and all the more precious for that? Not yet. Reluctantly pulling back, he dropped to his knees and extracted the spirit bottle from the pocket at the side of her leg. Handing it up to her, he smiled at her chagrined expression. “Tomorrow you deal with this, too, right?”
“If everyone will stop scheduling me to do other stuff.” She set the bottle atop the stack of books on the table, absently straightening the shade at the same time. Then she caught his expression. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll prioritize it.”
“Good girl,” he told her, and she shivered a little, giving him a tremulous smile.
“You’re still down there,” she observed.
“Indeed.” He slid her shoes off and her bare feet were trim, even dainty, with small, rosy toes that seemed ridiculously adorable to him. He wanted to kiss each one, but that could wait. Encircling her small ankles with his hands, he stroked his palms up her calves as high as her pants legs allowed, then transferred his touch to the outside of her thighs, smoothing upward over the subtle flare of her hips. Finding the bare skin of her waist under the baggy shirt, he caressed inward, marveling at the silky softness of her skin. Reaching the fastening of her pants, he looked up, aware of the nervous hitch in her breathing.
“Still good to go?” he asked her.
She nodded, a bit jerkily and set hands on his shoulders. “I didn’t expect to be so nervous.”
“It would be surprising if you weren’t.” Unfastening the ties, he eased the pants down, exposing her slim thighs beneath the long hem of the shirt. So unbelievably lovely. “Step out,” he whispered, bagging the pants around her ankles and waiting for her to get clear. Once she did, he tossed the pants aside and slowly stood, dragging light fingers along the silky skin of her thighs, loving the way she trembled, and how her liquid dark eyes gazed at him with utter trust and vulnerability. He toyed with the hem of her shirt, lifting it a little, tantalizing them both, while he studied her face. “Still okay to keep going?”
“You don’t have to keep asking,” she answered with a tinge of that imperious irritation he perversely loved.
“I think I do. I’m still not fully convinced this isn’t a reaction to all that’s happened.”
With a huff of exasperation, she grabbed the hem of her shirt, yanking it from his grasp, and pulling it off over her head in one movement. “There,” she declared, planting her fists on her hips. “Is that decisive enough?”
He didn’t respond immediately, too dazzled by the sight of her in the sheer white tank and blush-pink lacy panties. Her deep rose nipples thrust taut against the nearly transparent silky fabric, tipping her delicate breasts with frankly erotic effect. And the lace clinging to her narrow hips, just covering the black hair at her pubis, revealing the smooth, tawny skin of her flat belly… He nearly dropped to his knees again to better press kisses to that sweetly alluring expanse, an impulse difficult to resist with his legs going weak from the overwhelming blend of passion and tenderness. He wanted to ravish her and tend to her in equal measures, the warring needs stretching him on the tenterhooks of desire.
“Cillian?”
The sound of his name penetrated his stupor and he belatedly raised his gaze to her face, which looked wryly amused. It seemed that might not have been the first time she tried to get his attention. At least, the rational, mental variety. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but you are so fucking beautiful. I’m looking at you and…”
Her expression softened, though the amusement remained. “Why are you sorry?”
“Um.” He had to think. Shook his head. “Not sorry that you’re so gorgeous, but that I’m apparently struck stupid by the sight of you. I didn’t expect the lingerie.”
She grimaced, looking down at herself. “Blame Nic.”
“I believe I’ll have to send her a thank you note. Perhaps a gift.”
Alise laughed, eliciting a smile from him, too, which helped diffuse the tension and nerves. “I’m torn between telling you not to even consider it and wanting to be there to see her face.”
“I think Nic would maybe understand what’s between us.”
She sobered. “I’m not sure I understand what’s between us.”
“Is that all right?”
She considered that gravely. His Alise, never one to leap to an answer or decision. “Yes,” she said, nodding to confirm it. “I think… I think I’m willing to find out.”
It was hardly a declaration of love, but her words struck his heart as if they were. The warmth and happiness welled up, becoming a smile that felt radiant—and that she returned, at first hesitantly, then with confidence.
He held out his hands to her. “Then let’s find out.”