Page 106 of To Dance with Death

I need to make you understand what I feel for you.

My battered heart still holds my breath captive; only little slips of air sneak in. But I lift my hands. Set them on either side of his jaw.

And like all the reckless things I have done, I pull his mouth to mine.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The kiss is a shock.

I feel it down to the tips of my toes.

His arm comes up underneath the small of my back, arching me into him. So that we’re flush, and all the while his lips are locked on mine, both of us struggling to remember tobreathe.

So deeply he kisses me, it’s like being swept off a ship. Like clinging to the anchor as it falls beneath the sea line—a dizzying plunge. His tongue sweeps in, his free hand splayed along the curve of my jaw and neck. My own hands move to the smooth skin of his shoulders, then his biceps. I wrap my fingers around them until I can feel the pulse underneath.

I wonder if he notices the way tears still escape, slipping down past my temples to further wet my hair.

I’m so wrought with emotion. We haven’t finished our fight. Nothing is resolved, and yet he clings to me with an intent I am trying to make sense of—

I gasp for breath.

He allows me one moment of it, then he’s dragging his mouth along my cheek, my jaw, my neck, but he never strays long, as if he’saddicted. And Fates, I am, too. I find my fingers gliding once more, curling around his nape, the silk of his dampen locks.

This—

It feels like it did on Anell. When I found him on his balcony, reading, and he set down his book, his glasses, before coming to me. Collecting me. Poising me on his dresser. The way he’s kissing me…It is like that.

Like this was inevitable, and we fought it for far too long.

Like this is a breaking point.

Now he twists me so that my back is pressed against his chest, my knees against the plane of rock. I feel his hands run along my back, then curl around my abdomen, hugging me close.

His breath is hot on my neck.

His weight grows heavier on mine, and all the while he trails his lips along my ear, the back of my neck, between my shoulder blades—a kiss for every button he pops loose, until my bustier is undone.

The skirt follows, the remaining chemise all that’s left.

I twist back around, leaning on my elbows and failing to collect my breath, my sanity, and yet as I drink in the jade of his gaze, I seeit.

That same look. The one from Anell, except amplified.

I need to make you understand what I feel for you.

I don’t know what’s changed since Ansa. Can’t put a pin in what’s different. A change of heart, even as he’s weighed by indecision? But it seems to be more than that.

He doesn’t remember; I know that. He wouldn’t hide it.

But it’s like I have him back all the same.

I brush a thumb across his lips. He leans into my palm, kissing a promise there—one I don’t understand, but the surety of it…

I let go, drop the rest of my barriers.

Angling so that I’m sitting up more, I loosen the ties of my chemise, let it fall down my shoulder. Because I trust him, despite everything. I trust his heart. I trust him with mine.

His expression, the heat there, makes me melt all over again.