36. Chapter 36 #2
“Okay,” she said at last, very quietly, smile melting away. Then, with a composure that was entirely performance—and both of us knew it—she said, “Tell me about Selmont.”
I let her have the redirect. She needed it. I did too.
“It took my man a few days, but he figured out the warding system. He’s been able to maintain it steadily since. Writes that it’s lonely. The community has generally overlooked his presence, other than a few kids who’ve sneaked peeks at him through the shutters.”
Her face brightened considerably at that, encouraging me to continue speaking.
“He’s almost finished replacing your roof too. Says the snow’s slowed things down, but the cabin is warmer even with a few improvements.”
“You had him maintaining the wards and replacing my roof?” she asked, laughter threading her words.
I carefully controlled my face—couldn’t let her know how much I still disapproved of how thinly she’d spread herself there. “You handled the wards and were the healer for an entire village, Lunette.”
“Thank you for the roof. You did so much. But I should be the one in that cabin right now, Owain,” she said, ramming the dagger into my heart one more time.
“I know. I’m sor—”
“Shh,” she interrupted. “Just…let me get this out, please?”
I nodded, braced to bleed.
“I understand why you did what you did.” She lowered her voice, eyes lingering on my lips. “I’ve been trying to move past the hurt. And I can think of one thing that might help in that regard.”
Lunette pulled the chair beside me out with a scrape across the stone floor. She planted one foot on the seat. Then the other.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re doing,” I said slowly. “Getting the high ground for an attack?”
She stood atop the chair, hands on her hips, looking down at me like a woman who’s won something and intends to make it last.
I tilted my head back to look up at her. There was something profoundly undignified about this. I was the regent of Larethia. I had shadow magic, a battle record, and scores of men who flinched when I entered a room. But I was looking up at a woman standing on a dining chair in her stockings.
She said, “I want to be taller than you when I win this argument.”
“What argument?”
Her grin turned feral. “The one where I prove you don’t control everything.”
I unfolded my arms slowly. Something in her expression had shifted. The wary part of me recognized the look of someone about to do something irreversible. “All right,” I said, though it came out less steady than I’d intended.
She grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me.
The chair. The so-called argument. The flowers, the Assembly, the entire weight of the Tir—gone. All of it, instantly and completely gone.
I felt like dry timber struck by lightning. A surge of heat coursed through every vein, a wildfire of sensation igniting every nerve as her soft, warm, and undeniably real lips met mine. I wasn’t dreaming this time.
Lunette—my Luna, my moonlight—had just declared victory in the most devastating way imaginable. Little did she know I’d surrendered weeks before. I just hadn’t told her yet.
My hands shot out to wrap around her waist. The soft give beneath my fingers made me want to lose myself to bliss. Like berries and mead, her sweetness was overwhelming—utterly maddening. I pulled her closer with hungry, primal need.
The kiss deepened into a desperate struggle for breath, and for me, my sanity. Because every second I spent touching her, a piece of my mind settled, while another sliver of my sanity evaporated.
She was…everything.
She inched closer, and my hands dropped again, just low enough to skirt the top of her hips. I wasn’t about to push my luck straying any farther down. I would take whatever she offered and count it as more than I deserved.
But then she pulled back and whispered, “Does that prove it?”
I barely remembered what she’d asked until I looked up at her—kiss-flushed, bright-eyed, still slightly breathless.
I thought for certain the dazed look on my face would prove to her that I already knew I didn’t control everything.
But she was watching me with a wariness that looked far worried for my liking.
Caution told me to be careful. To maintain a scrap of my dignity.
But caution and my damned dignity could burn to ashes. “Mind, body, and soul, Luna. You control it all.”
Seeing her smile, the nagging anxiety receded. I had the weight of a kingdom on my shoulders, my poor behavior hanging over my head, and danger was arriving tomorrow. But when her lips found mine again, all of it simply melted away.
The moment her hips pressed into my chest, I groaned her name—a question, a plea, a prayer all in one.
“Yes,” her whisper slipped out between kisses. “More.”
I was instantly hard.
Pace yourself. Or, by the gods, you will explode.
I had just enough discipline left for that.
The same discipline that had held my magic in check during the interrogation this morning, that had kept my voice even when I wanted to put my fist through every vase of Coryanthus’s flowers—I turned all of it toward the singular task of not terrifying her with how much I wanted this.
The restraint would be agony, but I would suffer it a thousand times over for her.
She wanted me. After the abduction, the broken promise, the careful distance, she was here, saying yes. I would give her everything she asked for and nothing she didn’t for the rest of my damned life.
Standing on a chair was great for kissing, but I needed her comfortable. My hands slid down her sides, grasping her hips to hoist her up. She wrapped her legs around me, skirts splaying around my waist, and we were body-to-body.
So soft.
Her ribs moved against me as she breathed in, pressing her breasts into my neck. Dear gods, my trousers were suddenly too tight. I didn’t think I’d ever been more turned on in my life, and she’d only kissed me.
Muffin squeaked from his place on the table and shot out the door to escape into the balcony garden I’d had made for him. Good choice.
I carried her to the edge of the bed and slowly lowered her onto it. “Much better,” I whispered, dragging my lips up her cheek to trail kisses around her ear. “Tell me what you want.”
Her knees were drawn up on the bed, straddling my waist. I was so close to paradise that it physically hurt to keep myself still. But the pain didn’t matter. I’d stay here all night if that was what she wanted.
She’d gone still by the time our eyes locked again, as if she were braced for me to say or do something that would unravel everything that had just happened between us. Never.
“I’ll be here, waiting, begging for anything you’ll give me.”