“People won’t hide away in a drafty, run-down building,” he answered. “They’ll want shuttered, intact windows and doors that lock.”
It made sense, and she supposed it was at least one blessing. Still, if he had to leave, then he had to leave. There wasn’t anything either of them could do to stop the force of an angel’s order. Ingrid pulled back at the thought.
“Irindi,” she said. Luc peered down at her.
“What about her?”
“We need help.” She slid from his hold as an idea took her. “We need help stopping Axia, and Axia is part angel. What if Irindi and the other angels could stop her again? Banish her, like they did the first time?”
Luc didn’t react. He stayed still as a statue. Contemplating the merits of her idea, she hoped.
“Irindi and the other angels of the Order don’t concern themselves with human problems,” he finally said.
“But this isn’t just a human problem! It involves one of their own.”
Luc turned toward the growing fire.
“I’ve never summoned her,” he said into the flames. The light played off his bright eyes, turning them into glittering gems.
He would try. Ingrid didn’t need to ask him to do so, and he didn’t need to say that he would. He drew her back to his chest, tucking the crown of her head under his chin. The fire was already warming her legs, and she’d stopped shivering.
“I know it was difficult,” he whispered. “Leaving Grayson back there. And the Seer.”
He said the last bit quickly, spitting out the word as he might a chunk of gristle.
“He loves you,” Luc added, even more quickly.
Vander, he meant, not her brother. Ingrid raised her eyes, though she couldn’t see Luc’s expression from where she was, underneath his jaw.
“I think you love him, too,” he went on.
She gathered her breath. He didn’t say it angrily or pose it as a question. He’d simply stated it.
“You could have a life with him, Ingrid. A real life, and I think you want the things he could give you. Things like a family.”
A family? She already had one, and she wasn’t ready for anything more than that, not yet. She wasn’t even eighteen. Luc was older. Much, much older. He’d had plenty of time to consider all the things he wasn’t capable of having.
Silence yawned before them. She knew he wanted some sort of reaction. He would know a lie if she attempted one, and she would only end up disappointing him with anything less than the truth.
“I do love Vander,” she whispered into Luc’s shoulder. She felt his intake of air, the way it inflated and hardened his chest. She forced her way out of his hold so she could look up at him.
“But what I feel for you burns brighter. I may eventually want things you can’t give me,” she continued. “And I know I’ll grow old and you might stop loving me—”
He shook his head and growled, “No. This is not about how you look, Ingrid.”
“But right now,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Right now I choose you. I give myself to you.”
She didn’t have a moment to take a breath before his lips had crushed against hers. He wound his arms around her waist and sealed her body flush against his. She felt him everywhere, their bodies joined from ankles to lips, all soft curves and hard muscle. He formed himself around her, reaching in to take what he could before he inevitably had to stop. Before he transformed into something Ingrid couldn’t kiss. Couldn’t touch, not the way her hands were touching him now, gliding up the soft skin of his neck and into his hair.
Luc peeled her hands from where they were, lost in his short curls, and with a long, husky groan, moved her quickly, though gently, away from him. He held her at arm’s length before letting go of her hands completely, then stepped from the fireplace and turned his back on her.
Ingrid stayed quiet, her pulse loud, her lips throbbing. She knew what was happening to his body, and she slid farther back to give him more room. The bunching and heaving of muscles underneath the borrowed dove-gray linen shirt was more than a trick of the firelight, as were the broadening of his shoulders and the shortening of his hair as it started to pull back into his scalp.
But in the next moment, it all stopped. Luc stood still for another minute before he faced her again, looking faintly uncomfortable.
“Is that all?” she asked, amazed. He had stopped the shift. He’d actually fought it off.
He cleared his throat, his eyes only flashing to hers for a split second. “That was my fault. I lost control. Next time, if we go slowly … I might be able to last longer.”
Ingrid flushed and found it difficult to breathe.