Chapter Thirty-Two Lavender Sheets #2
Caelan dipped two fingers in his tea and flicked it in her face.
“Hey!” she shouted.
“First you want to be rid of me, now you want me to stay with you. Make up your mind.” Reya wiped the drops from her forehead and flicked him right back. A deep laugh rolled in his chest, a sound so rare and precious it made her ache.
“I was trying to be nice.”
“I’m growing on you, I understand,” he murmured. “It would hardly be the first time it’s happened to a female.”
Reya was half offended and half delighted at the teasing in his voice. “You know what—forget I asked.”
“Mhmm,” he hummed.
She was glad for the humor; it helped her overlook the fact that he hadn’t answered her. Her cheeks were hot, and she didn’t want him to see. Suddenly desperate for some privacy, she set the mug on her nightstand and vaulted off the bed. “I’m going to wash off.”
He ran his fingers over his mouth, and she remembered what those fingers could do. “If you wanted to get naked, thief, all you had to do was ask.”
Stars above. She picked up the first thing she could find—a brown boot—and threw it at his head. He dodged it with ease. She didn’t turn fast enough, and he tracked the uncertainty in her eyes.
“Reyanwyn.”
She didn’t pause at the supplication in her name.
Needing a moment to collect herself, she hurried into the bathing chamber and rubbed her face with her hands.
Had she really just invited Caelan to live with her?
She hadn’t planned on the words, they’d just spewed out.
All-Gods, what had she done? Turning on the bathwater, she shrugged off her clothes.
As soon as the steaming tub was half full, she sank into the water and scrubbed herself down, unable to stop replaying the scene in her head.
Even as she teetered on her words, her timing, she knew she had to know once and for all what they could be.
And knew she would have always regretted not asking.
When she was done, she rose, wringing her hair and sweeping it over one shoulder.
She wrapped herself in a linen towel, tucking the corner to hold it in place as she went to the sink, tipping her bottle of rose oil into her palm and rubbing it into her skin.
The closet door frame groaned, and she looked up to find Caelan in the mirror, leaning against the threshold of the bathing chamber, eyes averted.
Reya could feel every bead of water and sweat and oil that dripped down her skin. Though he wasn’t looking at her, the temperature in the entire flat took a dramatic spike.
“For argument’s sake…,” he said to the floor. “Where would we go? What would we do?”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She could do this. She could be brave.
“Anywhere. Anything.” She implored him silently to look at her, needing to know what he was thinking. Like he’d heard, Caelan trailed his gaze up from the floor slowly, taking his time and giving her every opportunity to turn him out of the room. The want in his expression made her want to burn.
When his eyes met hers in the mirror, they were such a bright gold she nearly gasped. He swallowed before he spoke, like his throat had gone dry. “Anything sounds nice.”
She gave him a small, fragile smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if it’s with a conniving thief?”
He took a step into the room. “I like your brand of conniving.”
She finger-combed through her waves, baring her throat to him. “Careful what you wish for.”
“Reyanwyn.” He invoked her name like one might appeal to an All-God. For the first time in ten years, she didn’t want to run from the sound of it.
All the times she’d been intimate with someone, she’d feared what she might reveal about herself in a moment of uncontrolled release. With Caelan, there would be no need to restrain herself. He didn’t fear her power or strength—he reveled in them.
There wasn’t anything she could give him that he hadn’t had on countless occasions in his immortal life. But this would be something she’d never had. It was more than just pleasure. It was the hope of a future they were both choosing despite everything stacked against them.
The wood floor creaked and the air behind her shifted. Caelan’s breath ghosted across her neck as he inhaled her changing scent. He hadn’t even touched her yet, and she was already burning.
Swallowing her fear of rejection, she slowly turned to face him, resting the heels of her palms on the sink behind her.
“Yes,” was all she said.
Reya waited for his leash to snap, braced herself to be pressed against the sink, the wall, the floor, but he didn’t move save to slowly grip the porcelain on either side of her.
“In five centuries, I’ve not seen anything more likely to be the death of me than you damp in nothing but a towel.”
She had to be on fire. There was no other explanation for the temperature of this room. He brushed the wet hair back over her shoulder, and her lips parted as the pad of his thumb pressed into the dip above her collarbone.
“Liar,” she breathed.
In answer, his hand curled around her nape, tipping her head back so she could see the storm of need in his eyes. “Never.” Then he slid his mouth over hers.
He wasn’t gentle with her, but he wasn’t rough like she expected, either. He kissed her like he wanted to lose himself. She opened for him, and he explored her with his hands and tongue like they had all the time in the world.
Her eyes fluttered closed as that calloused thumb traced up her neck.
One hand dove into her wet hair while the other tightened on her waist, and her body curved to the shape of him.
When she felt what this was doing to him, she made a small, helpless sound.
He tore his mouth away to slide down her jaw, his stubble scraping her freshly scrubbed skin.
Reya swam for the surface, for air, just a breath of it.
“Wait—” she gasped. It was getting harder to think.
He paused his descent, and she cursed her stupid mouth as he pulled back to look at her, his face pinched in concern.
She tensed. “I’ve only ever done this casually, and for a long time that was okay, but now…
I want more. I want an after. So if you don’t want me that way—”
He kissed her, swallowing her words and saying against her lips, “I want you every way.” Her breath abandoned her on a shudder as he ran a thumb over her lower lip. “I don’t know how to give you what you need. What you deserve. But you make me want to try, Reyanwyn.”
Warmth filled her chest, and her hands gripped his tunic. “So try.” It was all she could ask of him.
The sound he made was almost pained, and she wanted to drown in it.
They came together again, this time with a fierceness they usually reserved for sparring.
She tore at his tunic, and he let her remove it.
Thus far, he had been the one to explore her.
Now she wanted to explore him. Her hands traced the contours of his stomach as it flexed beneath her touch, and she cataloged his every response, humming against his skin in approval when she learned what he liked.
She loved how much larger he was than her.
Loved the warmth of his skin against hers and the safety she felt there.
She tried to tell him as much with every touch.
At the sound that came out of him when she dragged her mouth over the scar on his heart, one of many he had yet to share with her, she smiled against his skin. Caelan nearly broke her sink as he hoisted her onto the basin, consuming her as she’d consumed him. She’d never felt so beautiful.
All her life she’d brought pain and death to those around her.
Caelan was the one person she couldn’t break.
Because he was just as dangerous as she was.
Maybe they were just as likely to destroy each other as they were themselves.
Maybe they were a maelstrom waiting to break across the world.
If that were true, then that was how she wanted to go out.
Never taking his mouth from hers, he wrapped her legs around his waist and hefted her into his arms. Halfway across the room, Reya took his bottom lip between her teeth and reached for where he had grown hard against her.
He nearly lost his footing, pressing her against the doorframe of the closet to keep from falling.
Five hundred years of training and she’d managed to trip him with one hand. “All-Gods damn it, thief.”
She laughed, but it broke off into a moan as when he slid his thumb over her lips and tongue. The wood at her back creaked as his mouth began carving a path down her neck and shoulder, and her legs tightened around him.
When she tried to stroke him, he took her hand away with a growl and untucked her linen with his teeth. It pooled at her waist, and he groaned at the sight of her before he nipped at the swell of her breast. Her head hit the wood when he licked one nipple, slow and teasing.
Reya sucked on the pad of his thumb, only to have him take it from her and bring it between her legs. He moved to her other breast, giving it the same languid torture, gentling his touch until she was so on edge she thought she might start begging.
“By all means,” he said and she realized she’d suggested it aloud.
He kissed the map of her scars, lingering over the ones that told the worst stories and rewriting them with his lips and tongue. Then he set her on her feet and knelt before her, his tongue dipping into her navel. “Caelan.”
“Say my name like that again, and I swear by the All-Gods, I will stay down here for the next hour.”
Truth. She clamped her mouth shut. Not once had he broken his word, and she had a feeling he was not about to start now. He parted her and pulled back to blow on the soaked skin. Her yelp at the sudden chill broke off into a moan when he covered her with his mouth.
The noises that came out of her after that were likely to wake her neighbors, but she didn’t care, not as he slid a finger inside her, eyes drifting shut like he was losing himself in the taste and feel of her.