Page 71 of The King is Dead
“Yilan!”
I startled and turned back to him, staring.
“Love, it was a dream.”
“I know,” I gasped. “I know. It just…”
“I’m here,” he whispered, the words wrenched from his throat. “I’m here and you’re here, and we’re both safe.”
His fingers trailed through my hair, combing it back, his gaze worried.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” I whispered, my voice hitching with tears I didn’t want to shed—it was just a dream!—but he nodded and cupped his hand over my head, pinning me to the bed as he took my mouth with a low rumble in his great chest.
I threw my arms around his neck, thanking God for those massive shoulders, the steel muscle, the warm skin, the soft velvet of his shaved hair on the sides of his scalp, and the thicker, silkier strands of his warrior’s length as I tangled my fingers into it and pulled him to me.
“You’re safe,” he breathed into my mouth.
I swallowed the words, then gasped back, “It’s you I was worried about,” as he pulled himself over me, settling between my thighs, his thick arousal already sliding against me, tantalizing and thrilling, despite my soreness from the night before.
But I didn’t care how sore I was, or that it was light. I was still trembling from those nightmares of watching him die over and over. So I filled my hands with his hair, his neck, his shoulders, his chest. I filled my eyes with the sight of him, healthy and strong, and when he filled me, I threw my head back and sobbed his name, thanking God that he could prove that this was real, and those dark images were nothing but a dream.
25. It is Time
~ YILAN ~
I stood at the northeastern window of the tower—the windows were now unhexed. I’d told Melek my plan for us to fly from the tower and enter the Palace together, but it wasn’t going well. I stared out over the land beyond and let my frustration simmer, doing war with my unease.
Melek was making sense. But I didn’t like it.
“…If I sneak out of here like some kind of fugitive—even in your presence, even appearing with you—it all implies shame or something dark. Something thatneedsto be hidden,” he insisted from the other side of the room. “Not to mention, we’re already fighting the belief that I have somehow magiked or coerced you. You think that kind of appearance won’t affirm that conviction to those who hold it?”
Considering what he said, I folded my arms and stared out, watching the afternoon sun descend over the forest that stretched from this side of the Palace, all the way to the walls and beyond.
The dimming sun rimmed everything in gold and rosy warmth, gilding the trees, making the clouds blush…
In the distance was the city. At night, the warm pinpoints of light from homes and businesses would decorate the dark. But now it was only a wide span of boxes and triangles in every shade of brown and red beyond the sea of green forest.
It struck me that each of those shapes represented a life… more than one, most likely. Families. Relationships. Pains. Losses. Victories. Celebrations… The yoke of my people weighed heavily, and yet it was a welcome burden. One I ached to honor.
“Yilan?” Melek said behind me. I tensed.
It was so rare for me to have any time in the Palace to simply stand and watch, a part of me was awed by the beauty of my land. But the bigger part of me clenched with fear at how easily it could be taken. And the number of lives that would be affected—
“Yilan, please,” Melek growled.
I sighed and turned to face him.
He sat in the one chair we’d found that was big enough to seat him, though he still seemed wedged into it, the wide arms a touch too low for his frame.
He was finally dressed properly. Diadre had been true to her word and brought clothing, leaving it outside the door an hour ago. Now Melek sat, resplendent in fighting leathers that were black as night and riveted in brass. The neck of the double-breasted leather jacket sat high under his chin and was cut perfectly to emphasize his jaw. I didn’t know if the seamstresses had done it on purpose or if they’d misjudged his dimensions, but the clothing hugged him like a second skin, the seams at the shoulders cutting right angles to his arms so that somehow, his shoulders seemed even broader. He’d already secreted the blade I gave him somewhere in it.
The trousers hugged his thighs and knees until they disappeared into the calf-high boots he’d been wearing when we arrived, which had been polished until they shone like new.
Perhaps they were. Perhaps they’d made a new pair. I didn’t know.
I just knew that if I hadn’t been pissed off and nervous, I would have stripped him of that stunning clothing and taken him again.
When he’d first stood in front of me wearing it, the urge had been so strong my mouth had gone dry.
