Page 112 of Tempests & Tea Leaves
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “That you haunt my every thought, day and night. That all else fades when I am with you. That it is agony to be parted from you.”
“I remember now,” she whispered. She found herself utterly transfixed by his gaze, those remarkable eyes with their storm-dark rims of gray surrounding pools of brilliant silver. When he looked at her this way—as though she were the only person in all the world—she felt it resonating through her very being. “When you left …” She swallowed hard. “It was as if all the color had drained from the world.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his brow drawing lower. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I put you in an impossible position with your oldest and dearest friend?—”
“The fault was all mine. If I had acknowledged my feelings earlier instead of running from?—”
“I was equally stubborn and equally to blame,” she insisted, shaking her head. “I thought that I could find happiness with someone dependable, secure. Someone who would not challenge me. But I realized almost immediately that I could not gothrough with it. Not when …” She trailed off, unable to put into words the longing that had consumed her since he’d left.
“Not when?” His eyes—his beautiful captivating eyes—searched hers.
“Not when every fiber of my being ached for you. Not when your absence felt like a wound that wouldn’t heal. Not when I realized that a life without you, even a life of comfort and stability, would be a pale imitation of living.”
His breath hitched. “Iris …”
“I love you,” she whispered, her voice shuddering with emotion. “I have loved you for longer than I dared admit, even to myself.”
“Iris …” Jasvian closed the final distance between them, his hands coming up to cradle her face. “You are the sun in my sky, the very air I breathe.” His thumb traced the curve of her cheek. “I love you with a depth and intensity that defies description. I love your sharp mind and your sharper tongue. I love your courage and your compassion. I love how you challenge me at every turn.”
She drew a sharp, unsteady breath, overwhelmed by the force of his words. “I … I feared you would never return. That you had chosen duty over whatever might have existed between us.”
“I very nearly did,” he admitted. “But then I realized that my duty and my heart need not be opposing forces. That perhaps I could fulfill both—if you would have me.”
She was already nodding, her eyes dancing between his eyes and his lips, desperate to feel the touch of his skin on hers. He inclined his head, lips nearing hers, only to pause; his thumb traced a path down to her chin, gently turning her face aside to expose the line of her throat.
“No,” he murmured, almost to himself. His hand trailed down, his knuckles grazing the delicate curve where her neckmet her shoulder. “The first part of you I wish to kiss,” he whispered, lowering his mouth toward her shoulder, “is right here.”
A breath caught in Iris’s throat as his lips pressed against her skin. “This precise spot,” he murmured, pressing another kiss beside the first, sending shivers cascading through her, “has been tempting me since the moment you first sat at your desk across the study from me.”
“My neck,” Iris managed breathlessly, her eyes sliding closed, “has most certainly not beentemptingyou.”
She felt him chuckle against her skin, his lips dragging upward in a slow, deliberate path that left her trembling. “Even now, you wish to argue with me?”
“I wish to argue with you always,” she laughed, the sound transforming into another gasp as his teeth grazed the sensitive skin below her ear.
“Always?” he repeated. “Is that a promise?”
“Indeed,” she breathed as his lips found their way along her jaw, and her hands came up instinctively to thread into his hair. “It is a promise.”
And then finally, his mouth captured hers.
The kiss began softly, almost reverently, until Iris pressed herself closer against him, her hands tightening in her hair. Something seemed to break in Jasvian then, a final barrier of restraint falling away as the kiss deepened and intensified. One hand slid up her back to cradle her head while the other arm wrapped more firmly around her waist, holding her against him as though he feared she might disappear.
Iris met his passion with her own, years of imposed propriety dissolving beneath the heat of their shared desire. A dizzying wave crashed over her, unlike anything she had ever known. Relief so profound it bordered on pain, joy so bright it felt like weeping, and beneath it all, a fierce, aching need that resonatedin every nerve ending. This was what she hadn’t known she was missing, this connection, this dizzying, terrifying rightness. Heat bloomed low within her, spreading through her limbs like wildfire as his lips moved against hers with a hunger that she answered without hesitation.
When they finally broke apart, both breathless and flushed, Jasvian rested his forehead against hers. “I had not intended to be quite so … enthusiastic,” he admitted, his voice rough.
“I find I have no complaints,” Iris replied, a smile curving her lips. “Though perhaps we might continue this conversation somewhere less exposed to potential gossip birds?”
Jasvian laughed, the sound rich and unrestrained in a way she had rarely heard from him. “I care remarkably little for what anyone—gossip bird, fae or human—might say, so long as you agree to one condition.”
“And what condition might that be?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Marry me.”
The simple words, spoken without preamble or elaborate speech, stole the breath from her lungs. “What?”
