Kiaran goes still. His eyes lock with mine, his features softening. “Kam,” he whispers.
That’s all I need to hear. The single syllable is a declaration between us, an admission. I missed you and I’m still here and I’m still me.
I drop the sword and it clatters to the floor, forgotten.
My first words are spoken through tears. “I walked into this room to ask you irritating questions. Are you still you?”
Kiaran says something under his breath. A prayer? Then he steps forward, presses his forehead to mine, and wraps his arms around my waist. “I don’t know yet. Ask me another irritating question. Pester me with them.”
I let out a choked laugh. “Oh, thank god. I was concerned I’d have to challenge you to a duel.”
“You still might.” He shuts his eyes, as if he’s savoring the sound of my voice. “I enjoy a good duel, don’t you?”
“Swords or fisticuffs, MacKay?”
His smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “Both. Either. I don’t care. I just want you.” He cups my cheek. “Kam.” He says my name like he can’t say it enough. Like it’s his prayer. Like I’m his salvation. Then, in a voice just below a whisper, “Touch me.”
I slide my fingertips across his jaw, my thumb brushing his lower lip. Buying time before I explain everything. I have so much to say. “So you’re probably wondering—”
“Don’t finish that sentence yet,” Kiaran says, pushing me gently against the table. He pulls the collar of my shirt aside to press a kiss to my shoulder. “I prefer this instead.”
“You have no idea what I was about to say.”
“Something about how you’re alive, why your eyes look that way, and why your power feels different.” Kiaran’s lips trail to my collarbone as he begins unbuttoning my shirt. Kissing lower, until he finds the scar over my heart. When he pulls away to look at it, the black ring around his irises bleeds into the color and the fine hairs on my body rise. I’ve never seen his eyes do that before. “And it’ll involve our realms hanging in the balance, both our lives, and an inevitable exhausting battle. Do I have the right idea?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Kiaran’s irises become lilac again. “Then don’t tell me yet. I would rather pretend, for just this moment, that the world can fix itself.” He leans in, fingertips grazing my scar and sliding down, down, down, unbuttoning. “Touch me more. Kiss me. Say my name.” Each request brings another hot touch of his lips, his hands, a new button undone. Another. Another. “I need to be sure.”
“Of what?”
“That you’re real.” Then he presses an achingly soft kiss against my lips, one I barely feel. Then another, harder. “Tell me you’re real.”
“I’m real,” I whisper. “I’m still here. I can ask you more questions, if you’d like.”
“Later,” he says.
Then Kiaran’s lips are on mine. Hard. Desperate. Like he can’t get enough of me; like I’m going to disappear. As if at any moment, he’s going to wake up from this dream and I’ll be gone.
Kiaran kisses me like he’s about to lose me all over again.
He isn’t gentle. There’s no softness, no hesitancy, no delicate touches. And I don’t want kind. I don’t want gentle. My desire is just as fierce, just as demanding. I grasp the back of his shirt, digging in roughly with my fingernails. More. I want more. I need this. I need him.
I pull back only briefly to yank off my shirt, the rest of my clothes, his. Then it’s Kiaran’s skin against mine and we’re both burning, kissing, biting, clawing. It’s a physical urgency, a devouring need, a benediction of yes, now, more.
Kiaran lifts me onto the edge of the table. Pawns scatter across the map; the Queen falls onto the floor with a sharp knock.
Then Kiaran eases into me, hands gripping my thighs hard. When he presses his lips to my throat, I have a brief flash to my dream. To his teeth biting down, drawing blood. I stiffen slightly, uncertain.
But he only whispers, “Don’t disappear again, Kam. Don’t disappear.”
CHAPTER 18
LATER, WHEN my eyes are heavy with sleep, I say to Kiaran, “Shall I finish that sentence now?”
Kiaran embraces me from behind, dragging his fingertips across my shoulder blades. We’re in his bed and it feels as if we’re back in my dream. As if none of this is real and we’re in a safe space separate from the world. Cocooned in a beautiful lie.
Across the room, a shaft of light pools beneath the window from the full moon outside. The muffled roar of the waves crashing against the rocky isle fills the vast, silent space. And it’s so soothing. I could stay like this with him, in this bed, forever.
If we had that long. I wish we did.
“MacKay?” I look over my shoulder at him. When my eyes meet his, something in his expression makes me go still. Hunger.
He jerks away from me, breath hitching. Kiaran doesn’t answer. I watch as he struggles with himself, his features taut. His lips move, as if he were counting. Gaining control again.
“Are you all right?” I whisper uncertainly.
“Fine.” He shakes his head once, and then the tension leaves his body. “I’m fine. Don’t finish your sentence yet. It’s going to lead to me slaughtering things.”
“You like slaughtering things.”
“Compared to this? No.” He touches me again, his fingers grazing my arm. Tentative, hesitant. When I tell him he’s usually the practical one, he replies, “It must be your influence. I’m actually about to make several suggestions, and all of them are impractical.”
I smile. “Ooh, several suggestions, is it? My, my. Impractical Kiaran MacKay is . . . dare I say it? Adorable.”
Kiaran looks at me in disgust. “I am not.”
“You are and you don’t even know it. Adorable.”
“Adorable is something we call foolish humans right before we kill them.”
“Adorable is what we call adult men who love to cuddle and swear on their lives that they don’t.” Kiaran makes a sound in his throat. “You can growl at me all you want. I know your weaknesses, MacKay. Cuddling. Neck kisses. That ticklish spot just above your—”
I laugh as he grabs me around the waist and pulls me against him. He kisses me fiercely enough to make my toes curl. Then he pulls back with the smug expression of someone who has had thousands of years to perfect seduction and knows exactly how to use it against me.
Between touches I whisper that soon we’ll have to go back out into the world and face our fates. Kiaran doesn’t answer. He just kisses me like I’m going to die all over again. I haven’t been able to tell him yet that I still might.
“Let me tell you a story,” I say instead. “Once upon a time, there was a girl whose life was saved by the faery king—”