Page 96 of By the Orchid and the Owl
I frowned up at him. “Yes, he did. Why?”
Coen didn’t answer that. “What did he change?” Each word was clipped, strained, and I suddenly had the suspicion he was jealous of another man’s magic touching me. As if Lander was a man to contend with. I almost snorted at the thought.
“Hmm.” I twirled out of his grip, relishing the way my glossy sheet of hair whipped about me like a curtain. “Why don’t you try to find out?”
Not that there was anything still changed about me, but still—Coen had been way too moody since that last quarterly test, and he’d been so intent on urging me to study harder, practice more, that I had missed that coy, cocky side of him. Anything to urge him out of this mopey shell of his….
It worked. Coen clucked his tongue and said simply, “Fine.”
In one swift movement, he bent down, scooped me up by the thighs, and threw me over his shoulder like he’d done so long ago on the night before Branding. Then he whirled and trotted back up the steps, kicking open his house’s door.
I scratched at his back. “What are you doing?”
A few of the guys lounging inside turned toward us and raised their eyebrows appreciatively. Coen ignored them.
“I’m going to inspect every inch of you for changes, of course.”
Heat slunk up the skin of my legs where Coen’s large hands were tightening around them. We were almost to his room now, and when he barged in with me still over his shoulder, he didn’t even pause to close the door behind us; he simply kicked backward and sent it slamming shut with his foot.
Then dumped me on his bed.
Nothing could have prepared me for the way he bowed over me, every one of his muscles taut and taunting me to reach out and touch them. He’d crawled on top of me many times before, but it was always gentle and calculating, not wild and bordering on the fringe of frenzy like this.
“I thought you were taking me on a date,” I chided up at him. Trying to keep a note of mocking derisiveness in my voice despite that slinking heat.
But the breath in my lungs seemed to wiggle and squirm at the look he gave me.
“I am. This is our date. But.” Coen held up a finger. “You have to let me in.” He cleared his throat when I flushed, and that hungry haze in his eyes seemed to blink away. “I mean, you have to let me in your mind. Give me permission to go further than usual.”
Stay out of my head, I’d once snapped at him.Don’t enter it again without my permission.It all seemed so long ago.
“Of course,” I murmured.
I had barely finished saying it when the roomchanged.
A gasp burst out of me.
I wasn’t lying on his cleanly-made, fluffy white bed anymore, but a polished wooden boat rocking among puffed-up clouds. And we weren’t stationary, butmoving, up and up and up through a light mist, toward a sky smeared with purple and black and split wide open by the beaming curve of a crescent moon.
“Coen… what—?”
I shot upright and twisted to grip the edge of the boat, leaning over and looking down. I halfway expected to see nothing besides clouds, but no—through the veil of mist, that was definitely the outline of Eshol far below.
Coen’s eyes followed the movement of my face as I took it all in.
“I wanted you to feel what it’s like in my own head whenever I’m around you.”
I froze. Slowly turned toward him.
Finally, for the first time since that last quarterly test, he had snapped out of his seriousness, and as much as that statement absolutelypouredbutterflies into me, I couldn’t risk dragging him back into it.
“Hmm.” I pretended to contemplate our surroundings. “You feel clouded?”
Coen looked like he was ready to roll his eyes. “Unfortunately. It’s sort of annoying, actually.”
A smile formed on my lips. I crawled closer to him. “You feel high?”
“It’s nauseating,” came his answer. “And I have a fear of heights.”
