“I can’t wait to be back in my own kingdom where I’m able to see the sun.”
Nostalgia floats over me like a warm summer breeze. “Goddess, I can’t even remember when I spent a day in the sun. It’s always overcast and cold in this part of Orea. In Highbell, it was always snowing, and even if the sun did come out, which was very rare, I wasn’t outside to see it.”
Agitation snaps in his gaze like impatient fingers. “You will see the sun again, Auren. You will see everything and anything you want.”
My heart swells at the determination in his voice, at the way his fingers tighten on my waist. “I will,” I agree.
He nods, as if we just made the same vow. “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.” I expect him to step away and just grab my hand, but instead, he sweeps me up in his arms, making me let out a noise of surprise.
Striding through the snow, he carries me toward the tent, and when we’re closer, I send some of my ribbons out to hold up the tent flaps to make it easier for us to duck in.
As soon as we’re inside, I’m wrapped in warmth from the coals simmering in the center. Slade sets me down on the furs, and I look around, noting that everything is exactly the same, except...
“Got rid of my pallet?” I wander over as I note the metal armor stacked in the corner where I used to sleep.
“Not exactly,” he replies, nodding toward where his own pallet is. “I just shoved yours against mine since our sleeping arrangements are a bit different now.”
I send him a sly smile. “Awful presumptuous to think I’ll be sleeping with you, Commander Rip.”
“Call it presumptuous all you like,” he replies smoothly. “We both know I’m going to be buried inside of you soon.”
“Is that so?” I peel off my coat, but the fae book that I’d forgotten about drops from its pocket and lands on the ground.
“What’s that?”
I lift it up, checking to make sure the pages are still intact. “A book I found in the library,” I explain, and I see Slade’s eyes light with interest. “But...we’ll talk about that later.” I place the book and coat carefully on top of his armor before I sit down on his—our—pallet. I cross my legs, lips lifting up in a seductive smile. “For now, I’d like to do something else.”
He stalks forward and then braces his hands on either side of me, leaning down until our faces are right in front of each other. “All I could think about today is what you felt like last night,” he murmurs before he leans in to run his nose against my neck, skimming over the sensitive parts ever so slightly with his hot breath. “All I could smell was your skin, and all I could hear was the noises you made while I was deep inside of you.”
I shiver, my head tipping back and my eyes fluttering closed as he begins to press his wicked mouth against my skin. He crouches down in front of me, dragging the sleeve of my dress with him to bare my shoulder. “You’ve bewitched my senses, taken over my thoughts. Every time I blink, all I see is you, like you’ve seared yourself into my eyes and I’ll never close them again without envisioning you. And you know what?”
My voice is as breathless as my thoughts. “What?”
He leans away to look me in the eye again. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
This time, it’s definitely me who presses forward to claim him for a kiss. To claim him for so much more.
He is everything I never thought I could have. Every sip I never thought I’d taste.
As if I’m worried he’ll be ripped away from me, I hold him a little bit tighter, let my ribbons wrap around him just a little bit more.
When I get too overenthusiastic with my kiss, I bite down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. But he doesn’t pull back. If anything, it just seems to spur him on even more, and I swallow up an appreciative growl right from his tongue.
“Hungry?” he teases against my lips.
“I’ve been starving for a long time,” I whisper. As soon as I say that out loud, I realize how true it is, how undernourished my soul has been. I thought it was only freedom that I craved, but it was this too.
My life was a flat, barren plain. My horizon was stale and endless, with the constraints of others’ control. There was nothing but a bland, lackluster existence with no growth, no change. Just an arid land that held no rise.
The world taught me that things could always be worse. I learned to always look up, to take what I could get, to settle.
I became too blinded by my bright sides to see the truth.
Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.
Slade’s black brows pull together, and he sweeps his finger beneath my eye, making me feel the wetness there. “What’s this?” he asks, rough voice carrying his worry like rainfall in buckets.
I shake my head through the bouts of breath I pull in, taking in his scent with it. Freshly turned soil, wood chips wet by the rain, bittersweet chocolate left on my tongue. “I’m just...happy.”