I knock once on the door, then open it.
The room is dark but for a trickle of moonlight coming in from the window onto the bed. At my entrance, Beast starts to reach for his sword, then stops. “Sybella?”
I shut the door softly behind me. “I have slept with five men, not dozens. Three because I had to, one because I thought he could save me, and the fifth so I could get close enough to kill him.”
He says nothing, but watches my fingers as they unlace my chemise.
“I have never lain with a man out of love.” I meet his gaze steadily. “I would like to do so at least once before I die.”
“You love me?”
“Yes, you great lummox. I love you.”
He lets out a sigh. “Sweet Camulos! It’s about time.”
I cannot help it. I laugh. “What do you mean?”
“I have loved you since you first slapped that vile mud on my leg and ordered me to heal.”
“As far back as that?”
“I was too stupid to know it, but yes.”
“When did you realize you felt that way?” I am embarrassed to ask such a pitiable question, but I yearn to know.
He tilts his head in thought. “When the abbess announced you were d’Albret’s daughter.”
I gape. “That is when you decided you loved me?”
He lifts his hands, as if in surrender. “There was no deciding about it. It was just there. A great, unlooked-for complication. It is why I grew so angry, thinking the gods were having a rich jape at my expense.” He shakes his head in disbelief.
“So does that mean you will lie with me?” My voice sounds far more vulnerable than seductive.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed, his face growing serious. “Sybella, with all that you have endured at the hands of men, you do not have to do this. You do not have to give your body to earn my love. It is already yours.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But I would go to my death having truly loved at least once.”
He rises to his feet and crosses the short distance between us. I always forget how much he towers over me. Most likely because I never look upon him with fear. His hand comes up to smooth the hair back from my face, as if he would see it—me—more clearly. That simple gesture makes me feel more exposed than standing here in naught but my shift.
“I want you to be with me for the right reasons. Not because you feel you must or because you fear we will die, but because you want it with your heart and your body.”
I stare into his eyes—eyes that are only part human, just as I feel only partly human. If ever there was a man who could understand—and accept—the darkness in me, it is Beast. “Who better to entrust both to than the mighty Beast of Waroch?”
He pulls me closer, his gaze drifting down to my lips. I am surrounded by the heat from his body, can feel his heart thundering in his chest. He lowers his head until our lips are almost touching. When he hesitates, I rise up on my toes to close the distance between us and press my lips to his. Our kiss is sweet and raw and full of hunger. My hunger. His hunger. A hunger born of two lifetimes.
It is also full of rightness. Such blessed rightness. No dark ribbon of shame unfurls inside me. No voice screams No inside my head. I do not have to close my eyes and pretend I am a hundred leagues away.
His hand moves downward, his fingers trailing along my neck, and I savor the rough feel of his callused hand, marvel that a hand that has such a capacity for killing can also be so gentle. His other hand encircles my waist, then slowly skims up my ribs, stopping just before he reaches my breast. He rests his forehead against mine, breathing hard. “Are you certain?” he whispers.
That is when I hear it, the faint note of disbelief in his voice. “I have rarely been more certain than I am in this moment,” I say.
Then his mouth is back on mine and the carefully banked heat that has smoldered between us for so long erupts. Still, no darkness threatens to claim me. Instead, true desire, as uncertain and ungainly as a newborn colt, awakens in my body. My own limbs become unfamiliar, my movements uncertain. I, who have only ever been practiced and skilled. But I do not care, for all that has come before is but a distant memory. All that matters is us. Only us. This moment. His hand on my body. The mingling of our breath. Our hearts that are so close they now beat as one.
With a dizzying swoop, he picks me up and cradles me in his arms, surprising a laugh out of me. “What are you doing?”
He grins. “I’ve always wanted to carry a fair maid away and ravish her.”
“Methinks you should reconsider who is ravishing whom,” I murmur, surprised at how much I enjoy the sensation of his arms around me, of being carried.