Chapter 17 #2
The gold filled his eyes, and his shoulders shifted as if his wings were straining to be free.
“I’ll cook,” he said quietly.
“You’ve been cooking for a five-year-old all day.”
“I want to cook for you.” The way he said it made the honey light seem to gather closer around them both. “Come up to the house after Eric’s got him.”
“After Eric’s got him,” she echoed, her voice soft and low. Neither of them tried to pretend it was about the food.
Eric came at dusk, looking genuinely pleased about having a second child in the house.
He shouldered Toby’s small bag and the bear and let Toby explain, at length and without a single pause for air, the correct way to be interesting to a baby.
“Sound advice,” Eric said gravely, buckling him in, and touched two fingers to his brow at her.
“He’s in good hands. We’ll have him back after breakfast. Not early.
” A teasing grin broke through. “Take your time.”
He drove off before she could throw something at the truck.
She stood in the empty drive with the taillights shrinking down the road and the dust settling, and her pulse thundering in her ears.
Then she showered and stood in front of her closet for way too long before settling on a long rose floral skirt and a soft pink sweater.
She told herself it was because it was polite to dress for dinner, and knew it wasn’t the reason, and wore it anyway.
The kitchen at Stonehaven had come alive under Garrick’s hands the way the garden had come alive under hers.
Scrubbed wood and warm copper, and a range that could have fed the town.
He moved through it without hitting his wings on anything, which she found absurdly endearing.
When she arrived, he was chopping onions with a knife the size of a machete that looked like a paring knife in his hand.
“Sit,” he said, without turning. “There’s wine open.”
She sat at the end of the long scrubbed table where he’d set two glasses, and poured them both a glass.
She watched the broad plane of his back and the fold of his wings at rest, and the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt as he bent over the stove.
Onion and butter went into the pan and the smell of it filled the kitchen.
The house felt warm and lived in, nothing like the enormous silent place she’d first imagined beyond the wall.
“You built him a bed,” she said.
“I helped him build it. He needed a project. I had stone.” He set the wooden spoon down and smiled at her.
“He talks, once he decides you’re safe. A lot.
” He looked back at the onions, his expression unreadable.
“He told me about the garden in Charleston. The one they paved. He was sorry about it. For you.” The light caught the gold still burning low in his eyes. “He notices everything, your boy.”
“He gets it from watching people who don’t watch him back.” The words came out sharper and sadder than she meant, and she softened them by tipping her glass at him. “You watch him back.”
“Yes.”
“Every time.”
“Yes.”
She set the wine down, and it clicked against the wood, too loud in the sudden quiet.
Across the kitchen the pan sizzled but neither of them looked at it.
The distance between the table and the range was maybe eight feet.
She stood up, and he was already coming to meet her, and the distance vanished.
His hand came up to cradle her face, his claws already retracted.
“The dinner,” she said.
“The dinner can burn.”
“You made a whole—”
He kissed her. Not the rushed kisses on the terrace with a phone waiting to ring, or the firelit kisses with a child asleep on the rug ten feet away and both of them trying to stay quiet.
This one was slow and thorough and devastating.
The house was empty of everyone but them, and a low sound rumbled through his chest, resonating against her palms. His other arm circled her and he lifted her up against him so she didn’t have to strain to reach him.
His skin was always cooler at first touch, but it changed under her hands as the kiss went on, the cool bleeding to warm and the warm climbing towards hot, the heat startling a gasp out of her.
“You run hot,” she managed.
“Only—” the word came out rough. “—recently.”
She laughed, and the laugh turned into something else halfway.
He carried her effortlessly out of the kitchen and into the warm bright living room, where a fire threw its light across the polished wooden floor and a thick dark rug lay in front of the hearth.
He went down to his knees on it with her still against him, and the size difference was both overwhelming and perfect.
His hands spanned her back, and she could feel his heart racing beneath her palms, hard and fast.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice still rough. His eyes had gone full gold, and his wings were shifting restlessly at his shoulders. “If you want to stop. Tell me and I stop. I’ll always stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.” Her hands found the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve wanted this since the fern wall, you impossible—” She got a button free. “—stubborn—” Another. “—man.”
“Not a man, little thorn.”
“Since the fern wall,” she said, “you impossible, stubborn, gargoyle.”
She felt his laugh more than heard it, his chest vibrating with it. Then he was easing her sweater over her head with a care that made her want to cry. Her skirt was next, his movements still slow and reverent, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was happening.
He looked at her in the firelight and then he made a sound she’d never forget as his wings snapped open, spreading wide and dark and enormous behind him. The firelight caught the membrane and turned it to smoked amber, and the sheer scale of it should have frightened her. It didn’t.
“Sorry,” he ground out, “I can’t—”
“Don’t.” She put both hands on his hot bare chest and pushed his shirt the rest of the way off. “Don’t you dare fold them. Not with me.”
He eased her down and rose over her until the firelight was gone and there was only him. His huge hand cradled her head as his mouth found her throat.
“Mine,” he said against her skin, the word low and rough, more vibration than voice.
She put one hand around his neck and pulled him closer as her other hand slipped beneath his belt.
He thrust into her hand, huge and hot and…
ridged? A shiver of pure anticipation ran down her spine, and her fingers tightened around as much of him as she could hold.
“Say it again,” she whispered.