Page 87 of Thorn Season
Then he said, voice low and hoarse, “Because if you did... I couldn’t do this.” Slowly, he reached for my hair. His fingers drifted through the strands, and he lingered a moment before withdrawing, a blossompressed between his thumb and forefinger. The flower swirled on the breeze, and his hand lifted again, gently brushing a wayward strand from my brow. “Or this,” he whispered.
My body hummed as a tendril of his specter echoed his movement—grazing my temple before it glided down with his trailing fingers. Painting lines of fire down the curve of my face, my jaw, my fluttering throat.
“Or this,” he breathed, pouring that spectral thread down the back of my neck while his fingers drew inward, across my collarbone.
My specter coiled inside me, hot and trembling, as Keil’s power thrummed along my spine, pausing at the top edge of my gown. His fingers similarly stilled at the dip of my collarbone—barely making contact, like he was touching something sacred.
I swallowed, and his touch bobbed against my skin. “Well,” I said on an exhale. “It takes more than a party-trick power to rattle me.”
His pupils swallowed the gold in his eyes.
Then Keil’s specter swept fully around me.Wreathedme—hands and arms and shoulders—in tingling, mischievous vines. My right hand landed in his palm, while the left dropped onto his shoulder. His spare hand curved around my waist, his skin feverish against the lacy fabric.
His power glided off me, and his heated gaze fell to my mouth. “How’s that for a party trick?”
Because he’d positioned us as if to dance.
My chest rose and fell rapidly, his breaths spilling hot between full, parted lips. And I realized how much I wanted those lips on me. Not just crushing against my own, soft and open and tasting of Keil. I wanted them onme—mapping my skin with that near-reverence, following the path his specter had taken. I wanted to breathe him inand lose myself in the rich, head-emptying scent.
With that image singing in my mind, I lifted on tiptoe. Keil leaned down to meet me, pulling me closer from the waist.
It took all my self-control to turn at the last second—to brush my lips against his ear and whisper, “Impressive. But I’m still not going to dance with you.”
I pulled back to watch a smile gather around Keil’s eyes—the smile of a competitor who’d met his match.
He released me slowly, his shoulder muscles shifting under my fingers, his thumb making one last sweep over my knuckles before he freed my hand. I stepped back and the night felt colder.
“Good night, Ambassador,” I said, breathless.
Keil cleared the hoarseness from his throat. “You don’t have to call me that, you know.”
I looked him over and raised a brow. “You wouldn’t like the other names I have for you.”
Keil’s laughter chased me through the drawing room as I tried, and failed, to cool down from the inside out.
25
By the time I returned to my chambers, cheeks ablaze, I’d mentally run through thirty different scenarios that would have ended with my lips on Keil’s.
Perhaps Father had been right to keep me from other Wielders. Perhaps I was too easily entranced, too likely to let my guard down, because of what Keil was.
But... it didn’t seem that way. There had certainly been a thrill in exploring his specter, but once the specter had receded, I’d wanted to explorehim—his conflicting softness and solidity, his unwavering faith in the world.
I’d wanted to explore the full sweep of his mouth.
And that kind of exploration had nothing to do with Wielding.
A knock pounded my door, and I shook myself. This was a dangerous slope of thought. But not as dangerous as the dayglass in my pocket. I shoved the shard under my mattress, hiding the evidence of my evening.
I was still a little flushed opening the door.
Junius’s dispassionate gaze doused me in cold clarity. “Finally.” He swept inside, his white-stud earring—bonestone, I now realized—peeking above a stiff collar. “Do you know how many times I’ve come knocking?”
I shut the door, sighing. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You didn’t answer my note.”
“You didn’t send a note.”
