“I’m here to call in the favor you owe me,” Iris said. “A favor you granted me on a windowsill, far far away.”
Roman had been waiting for this moment. How many times had he lain on his bed in the darkness, alone and sleepless, haunted by the longing?
He wove his fingers into Iris’s hair and brought his mouth down to hers.
{35}
Forget Me Not
She tasted just as he remembered. Like sugar in strong black tea. Lavender. The first rays of dawn. Mist that has just burned away from a meadow.
Roman framed her face, his thumbs caressing the blush of her cheeks as his mouth opened to hers. He groaned when her tongue slid along his. She was everything familiar, everything beloved to him, and yet there was a hint of something new and unexpected when her teeth nipped his lower lip. A taunt, a challenge. A side of her that he was desperate to explore and memorize.
An ache spread through him when he felt Iris’s hands grasp his shirt, tugging him closer. He eased them to the tree until her back was aligned with it, their feet lost among a tangle of roots.
Breathe, he commanded himself, and he forced his mouth to break from hers. There was no space between their bodies, and he bent lower, his lips tracing her neck, the hollow of her collarbone.
“Roman,” Iris whispered. Her voice was husky. Strained. Roman realized she couldn’t draw a full breath, not with him pressing her against the tree as if the two of them were on the cusp of becoming immortalized, entwined amongst the branches like a myth.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, his throat narrow as he eased away.
Iris’s fingernails curled into his back, keeping him close. “No. Do you see that light? Over there, through the brambles?”
Roman glanced behind, rigid with dread. He had let himself forget, just for a moment, where they were. The world they lived in. And just as Iris had said, there was a torch beam, sweeping the neighboring property. He wondered if it was Bruce, but he didn’t want to find out.
Roman’s attention returned to Iris. Half of her face was dappled in darkness, but her eyes gleamed, soft and expectant, as she watched him.
We aren’t safe here, he thought as he took her hand in his. The wildfire that had crackled through his blood dimmed, but he could still feel the heat in his bones. Embers waiting to rekindle.
“Come with me,” he said, and led her away.
* * *
In another time, in another world where the gods had never woken, Roman would have walked Iris through the garden, showing her all his favorite places and stoking fond memories. But that world could only exist in a dream, and Roman held her hand, so warm in his cold one, and hurried her from shadow to shadow, back to the faithful lights of the estate.
They made it safely up the trellis and across the roof, slipping into his bedroom. Roman was short of breath, and he didn’t want Iris to notice. He gave himself a moment to recover by closing the window and drawing the curtains. Only then, when the two of them felt tucked into a haven where no god could ever find them, did he watch Iris study his bedroom.
Unsurprisingly, she went to his bookshelves first, her mouth agape. She touched the gilded spines lovingly; it made him want to give them all to her.
“Quite the library,” she said, casting him a wry glance. “How many thesauruses do you have on these shelves?”
“Only six.”
“Only?”
“Half were inherited.”
“Ah, I remember now. Some of these books belonged to your grandfather.”
He nodded, his gaze following her as she walked to his wardrobe next.
“So this is where my letters first came to you,” Iris said, opening the carved door.
“Mm. The paper made such a mess on my floor that I had no choice but to read what you wrote.”
“All those sharp-edged words of mine. All those thoughts that felt too difficult to speak aloud.” She paused, studying his clothes hanging within, starched and arranged by color. “I’m surprised you didn’t run from me then.”
Perhaps it was her tone, or the words she didn’t say but which he could still hear, hidden within the cadence of her breaths. Or the way her vulnerability flickered, like she was lowering a piece of steel.
“On the contrary,” he said. “Your words only drew me to you.”
She was quiet for a beat before saying, “I might need to borrow one.”
“Borrow what?”
“One of your shirts to sleep in. Although your bed is quite narrow. A one-person bed, by the looks of it.”
Roman took a step toward her. And then another, until he could count the freckles on her nose. “I thought you learned this about me during our Gazette days, Winnow.”
“I learned many things that pertained to you in that office,” Iris said, brow arched. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
He leaned down, his mouth angled close to hers. He watched her draw a deep inhale, her lips parting. But he only murmured, “I do love a good challenge.”
“Name it, then.”
“My bed can fit the two of us.”
“If you say so, Kitt.”
Before Roman could reach out and touch her, she slipped past him. But he felt the sleeve of her trench coat brush his arm, leaving a trail of gooseflesh behind. He turned to watch her stride to his bed, where she sat on the edge of the mattress, judging its softness.
“I’ve always wanted to sleep on a cloud,” Iris said. She proceeded to lie down, her hair spilling across his pillow.
“Does it meet with your approval?” he teased.
“It does. And you don’t know this about me yet, but I steal blankets.”
Roman smiled, following her to the bedside. “I do, in fact, know that from experience.”
From the night I became yours.
He thought back to it now. The night before the world fell apart. They had been together but in utter darkness. There had only been their bare skin and their hands, their mouths and their names. Discovering each other slowly on a pallet of blankets.
Roman looked at Iris now, fully clothed in her sweater and skirt, trench coat belted at her waist. Stockings up to her knees. Boots coated in dust. She did not seem real in that moment, and he wondered if he was imagining her, like he had countless times before. Envisioning what she would look like in his bed.
“Join me,” Iris whispered.
Roman eased down to the mattress, feeling it give beneath his weight. Iris turned on her side to fully look at him, one of her legs sliding between his own, her foot hooking around his ankle. He suddenly felt empty of words, as if the heat of her body had melted them all, but the silence was comfortable. He savored it, watching Iris intently.
She began to trace his face with her fingertips. The arch of his brows, the edge of his jaw, the corner of his lips.
“Do I look the same as you remember?” he asked. It was a foolish question; they had only been separated for a span of weeks. Not years. But he wondered if she could sense the changes that had evolved beneath his skin. The cracks and the wounds. He wondered if Iris would embrace those broken pieces or be wary of them.