Page 162 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
His eyes glinted. “Perhaps.”
She slid her hands over his cheeks and down his neck. “Fae men can’t grow beards, you know. This is new to me.” Her fingers stopped at his collar bones, noticing his necklace. “You’ve added a new bead,” Aislinn remarked, turning the wooden bauble towards her. She made out a newly etched swirl, slashed through with something that looked like a thorn.
Caer’s throat bobbed. “This is just a temporary one.”
“Oh? Until what?”
“Until I find the time to render you in a more suitable material. Obsidian, perhaps.” He pulled a lock of her hair. “Amber. Garnet.”
“How long did it take the others to work their way onto here?”
“Oh, a few months, at least.”
“You’ve barely known me—”
“I know you,” he whispered. “I know you in the way one knows the shape of their limbs though they’ve never thought to memorise them, in the way they recognise a scent they’ve known once in childhood, the way they know the sea and sky and the stars above them—changing and constant, endless and immortal. I know you, Aislinn Ardenthorn.”
“That was… poetic.”
“Do you doubt me?”
Aislinn swallowed. “I am not accustomed to letting myself believe in good things when there is any room for doubt,” she whispered. “But yes, I believe you, Caerwyn of Afelcarreg. Spirits haunt me if there ever comes a time when I do not.”
“Will that actually happen, now you’ve said it—”
“Kiss me, fool, before I change my mind.”
Caer’s dimples deepened, his crooked smile making her weak in the knees. “I was intending to savour you, you know. I had the kiss all built up in my head…”
“I’ve had enough of sipping you when I’m dying of thirst,” Aislinn said, trailing kisses along his jaw, “but if you wish to demonstrate… I can hold myself back.”
Caer pulled away from her, swallowing his smile and schooling his face into something more placid. He took her hands, collecting them in his and kissing her knuckles softly. “I was going to start like this,” he said, and then stroked back a lock of her hair, fingertips lingering against her skin, brushing the pointed tip of her ear. “Then I was going to do this,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers, as if offering up a silent prayer, a plea to remember every second that would follow with the clarity of crystal. “And then this…”
At last, his mouth found hers again. Her lips parted for his, his tongue exploring hers. It was like wildfire, like battle. Her arms slid around his neck, her body liquid against his as the kisses descended down her throat.
“What happens next?” she breathed.
Caer grinned against her skin. “I didn’t dare imagine too much more. Seemed rather… presumptuous.”
“Well, I imagined plenty!”
Aislinn gripped the back of his hair, steering him towards the bed, the both of them laughing as they fell down together, Aislinn on top. He stared up at her, eyes wide and black, bright and luminous as hot coals.
She peeled off his shirt. Her mouth went dry. Her fingers skimmed past lightly bronze muscle, hardly daring to touch. “I am going to lick every one of these,” she told him.
“I am not going to stop you.”
She placed her mouth to his neck and let her tongue travel down his body, stopping to explore every muscle, every hard curve of him, punctuating her journey with kisses, occasionally returning to that perfect, glorious mouth of his. She’d kissed people before, kissed men and women and creatures that he could only dream of, but she’d never known it be like this before, like she wanted to inhale him, drown in him, her thoughts spiralling with every second.
She’d experienced sex before too, she’d dabbled in love—but she’d never felt anything like this, the desire to marvel at every dimple in his skin, to commit every part of him to memory. She wanted her touches to absorb him.
She stopped at his hips, hands on his trousers, searching for permission.
Caer sat up, shifting to the end of the bed, as if trying to hide how desperately aroused he awas.
“Do we have anything to worry about?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
