Page 137 of Silvercloak

She couldn’t bring herself to ask what happened. There had been too many painful revelations for one night, and her exhaustion had returned with a vengeance.

Levan washed his torso, his pinned arm, pale skin glistening with the citrus oil. But when it came to his back, he struggled awkwardly with the angle of it, flicking the cloth between his shoulder blades without achieving very much, and when he tried to wash his unpinned arm, he couldn’t fold his wrist the right way.

“Do you want me to do it?” Saff asked, before she could think about what she was suggesting.

Levan froze for a beat, swallowed so hard his throat bobbed, then handed her the cloth.

His back was rippled with muscle, every groove and ridge shadowed by the flickering lantern light behind them. She ran the cloth over the sharp lines of his shoulder blades, and he shivered as the cold fabric brushed his warm skin.

Still standing behind him, she delicately held his hand as she cleaned the inside of his pulsating wrist, the crook of his elbow, the bulge of his bicep. For some reason, it felt more intimate than the impassioned kiss they’d exchanged, and he seemed to have temporarily stopped breathing.

She didn’t want the moment to end, so she squeezed the cloth and rubbed it against the back of his head, soaking away the excess oil and moisture. His hair felt impossibly soft. Every other part of him was hard, honed, a stoic construct against the world, but his hair felt like skimming the bolts of satin her uncles used for the royal cloaks. As her nails scraped over his scalp, he let out a long, slow sigh. She felt the reverberation all the way up her arm.

In that moment, every other emotion fell away, leaving onlywant.

It wasn’t just the generalized arousal she always felt after too much casting—the simple animal of her body trying to replenish its magical well.

It was deeper, richer.

Darker. Altogether more terrifying.

Tentatively, heart racing, she planted a kiss on his tufted double crown, the hair scented with grapefruit and blood orange and lemon zest. She cupped a palm in the crook between his throat and his collarbone, then traced kisses down his neck, the skin warm and tender, his pulse skittering against her lips.

Levan’s breathing turned ragged as he laid his free hand over hers.

“I’m not a good person, Silver.”

She pulled her mouth away, but only slightly, so that her breath still caressed his throat. “You told me to abandon childish notions of good and evil or I wouldn’t survive here.”

Dropping the cloth to the ground, all the exhaustion had suddenly left her, but so too had that jittery, uncomfortable adrenaline. She coursed with a pleasant flutter, a raw anticipation, the air around them charged, crackling with something singular and intimate.

He tilted his head back against her hand, the lantern illuminating every ridge of his throat, and he sighed his surrender.

Still standing behind him, she traced her forefinger up his sharp jaw then brought her lips to his. They were upside down, the angles all wrong, and surely his throat was pulling tightly, but he breathed against her, ragged, and as they kissed softly, uncertainly, that familiar unspooling began in her chest, her stomach, between her legs.

She crossed around to the front of him, trying not to look at the brand on his chest or the scars on his arm or the sprig of holly between his ribs, and kissed him again, deeper now that the angle was right, his tongue darting against hers like an invitation.

All thoughts of crypts and corpses vanished from her head.

If that made her a bad person, so be it.

She was driven once more by that deep nihilism, a sense of reckless abandon, the feeling that they both might die at any moment, all the fear and danger and pain coalescing into something wholly intoxicating. As she kissed him beneath his ear, along the hard ridge of his shoulder, over the puckered skin of the brand, the frantic pattering of his heart sounded likevictory,that she could coax some kind of reaction from this stoic, closed-off mage.

Running a palm over his chest, his bare stomach, theVof his hips, she tucked a thumb into his loose waistband, behind the stiff leather of his belt, and an involuntary moan tore itself from his lips.

“We can’t,” he muttered, swallowing hard. “The power dynamic—it’s wrong.” Saff thought he meant because he was held prisoner, but then he added, “You’re here against your will.”

Their faces were inches apart. Her eyes searched his, finding nothing but desire behind them. “And yet you’re the one pinned in place, and I’m the one who could hurt you if I so wanted to.”

His pupils flared dangerously. “Hurt me, then.”

Saints.

There was a hitching feeling in her chest as she worked the buckle of his belt free. He shimmied in the chair so she could tug down his trousers and his underwear, leaving him naked beneath her.

When she took him in her hand—palms still soft and slick with citrus oil—he inhaled sharply. She started slowly, questioningly, feeling him throb against her palm; when he gave her a strained nod, she went faster, digging the nails of her free hand into the back of his neck, their lips almost but not quite touching.

For a moment he hung his head back, letting his eyes flutter closed. When they reopened, something fierce and bright had awoken in them.

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