Page 74 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
Shaking his head, he took a tentative step back but kept his hands on my waist. He ran his fingers over the layers of clothes I wore, but I felt it as if he’d touched my naked skin.
“I would never hurt you,” he said, his voice pained.
“I know,” I whispered back.
Just like I didn’t want him to hide the truth to spare my feelings, I’d do the same for him.
“It’s...this is different for me,” I said. “You’re not human which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes when your fangs come out like that, it scares me even though everything inside me tells me you wouldn’t hurt me.”
He nodded and when he opened his mouth to speak, I held up a hand.
“But it’s more than that.” I swallowed hard, determined to tell him how I felt before I wussed out. “How I feel about you, the way you look at me and make me feel. . . it’s intense. I like it,” I hurried on. “I like you. It’s just a lot.”
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. When he opened them, they were the most brilliant shade of violet.
“I like you, too.” He licked his lips. “A lot.”
There went the butterflies again, flapping hard against the confines of my chest.
I smiled. “I couldn’t tell,” I teased. “You’ve been pretty subtle about it.” I waggled my brows at him.
On a chuckle, he peered down, his hand gripping the back of his neck. “I don’t think subtleties are one of my stronger qualities.”
I knocked my hip against his, except he was a lot taller than me so I ended up bumping his leg. “You mean you have other qualities?”
His smile grew, bringing out his dimples. Damn, I loved those dimples.
“My mother tells me I’m great at sewing.” A sense of sadness and longing gleamed behind his hypnotic eyes.
“Moms have to lie and say nice things to us,” I teased in the hopes of taking that sadness away. “Mine once told me I had a beautiful singing voice.”
“Are you saying my mother lied? Do you not like your hat?” He pulled my beanie down to cover my eyes.
I wrinkled my nose and lifted the beanie up to see his face alight with amusement. It made him look youthful and somehow more beautiful than usual. Not that he wasn’tbeautiful when he was serious, but this was different. I enjoyed seeing a more carefree version of him.
“It’s hideous. So’s the blanket you left me when all this snow started.” I raised my brows in challenge, to see if he’d deny leaving me the blanket. Or the gloves I wore.
“You knew it was from me?” he asked.
“Not at first, but I don’t know any other seamstresses who use this fabric.”
“I’m hardly a seamstress.”
I was surprised he knew the term when others were foreign to him. It was strange and interesting.
Using his magic, he swirled snow from the ground and dropped it on my head.
I shook out my beanie and growled. “You’re so dead.”
My words only made his grin grow wider.
With a handful of snow in my hand, I raced toward him, but he hefted me over his shoulder and spun us around. When he finished, I reached down to the waist of his pants, careful not to touch the wounds still healing on his back, and pulled enough to push snow down his pants.
He screeched and dropped me on my ass gently. Always gently.
While I laughed, he sent another swirl of snow up. Instead of hitting me with it, it circled me in a dance. It was like a heavy mist that froze in place when I touched it before he let the snow drop.
“Not gonna lie, that was pretty cool,” I said.
