Page 128 of Thorn Season
He shifted angle, and the barest brush of our mouths sent heat flaring across my skin. “I’m glad,” he said, resting his hands at my waist, “that it wasyou.”
His spectral touch flickered, its rhythm slowing as his heavy breathing tickled my lips. The waves went loose and tense in different places, like muscles shifting in an embrace.
My power heated, lapping out with its own tentative ripples. Each graze of contact—similar to the trace of searching fingertips—sent phantom tingles over my arms.
Keil was watching me, tender and uncertain. “Is this all right?” he whispered. Because this was a more vulnerable exploration. A mutual baring of ourselves.
I reached for his face, fingers trembling across the line of his jaw. “Yes,” I breathed.
Though I’d never known true safety, I imagined it felt something like this: going soft and languid against someone who I knew would hold on to me, even as I melted.
Keil drew me closer from the waist, thumbs drawing faint circles over the thin fabric of my blouse. His power echoed the movement in a gentle caress across my specter.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, his mouth moving against mine. “Every part of you.”
My power went fluid under his touch, a muscle rolled out from knots, and another sigh rushed out of me as the sensation soothed the tightness in my chest.
I swallowed, vision swimming. My specter had always representedthe most uncomfortable piece of myself—a straining ache, weighing on my bones.
I’d never realized until this moment that it could bring me anything but pain.
Keil knew it. Which was why he brushed his power against my own again—with warm, intimate intent—and whispered the same words he’d spoken on the balcony, now with a deeper, softer meaning. “It’s a gift,” he said, turning his lips toward my hand. “And gifts should never hurt.”
He pressed a kiss inside my palm. Smiled against my skin.
As our specters untangled and my power flowed back inside me—still flittering from his touch—my free hand climbed up his armor. I hooked the back of his neck.
And finally,finally, I drew him down to me.
Our mouths pressed hot and sweet and open, and Keil went loose as honey—one hand gathering me against him, the other cradling the nape of my neck. I buried my fingers in his hair, bringing him impossibly nearer until his groan rumbled through me. Until my back arched—my grip tightened—because I knew this was goodbye, and I could never bring him this near again.
Keil pulled away first, but only to run his lips down my neck, each kiss blossoming with new heat across my skin. His hand threaded through my hair, tilting me back, and my breaths rushed up into the night through parted lips.
He paused at my pulse point, and I felt myself unraveling as his mouth moved slowly against my throat. “Every part,” he said deeply, his hair tickling my cheek. “So beautiful.”
The words curled within me, as fragile and shimmering as a spectral thread.
Keil trailed those soft kisses back up my throat—across my jaw,my dimpled cheek—ending with one last brush upon my mouth. One last moment of shared breathing, lashes fluttering against skin.
As if we were both pressing into this silence all the time we should have had, because we had no time left.
Keil held my face between both hands again, calluses scraping softly where he brushed my hair away. “Alissa,” he whispered, and my name was a plea on his lips—a prayer. The sound of it turned me molten, almost had me saying yes to him—yes, yes, yes—because what did crowns and kingdoms matter when he’d already made me a god in his arms?
But as the river breeze cooled my skin, reality clawed back to me, sharp and insistent; an ache spread throughout my chest once more.
Because I knew I couldn’t follow him down a path that wasn’t mine.
Our parting was painful—arms drifting off each other, feet shuffling back as our bodies still leaned in. I’d never been a natural wish-maker, but I found myself wishing for a lot of things as Keil cleared his throat and straightened, that mixture of heat and sorrow still glassing over his eyes.
“Be careful,” he said.
“I have to be. I owe you my life.”
The ghost of that infuriating smile graced his lips. “I’ll settle for a dance.”
I waited until Keil’s footsteps faded, until my chest stopped throbbing, before I slanted my head to the sky. I was as close to my estate as I was to the palace. I could ride home and never return to Henthorn again.
But I’d journeyed too far to turn back now.
