He tapped her on the nose.“You would’ve regretted it.If you’d sent them off again, you wouldn’t have forgiven yourself for it.”
“I might have,” she muttered, unwilling to concede that he was right.“You don’t know me that well.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he replied with warm affection.“I know you considerably better than you want me to.”
He always had, even from that first game he’d played with her in her tower room, finding ways to sneak past her careful defenses, extracting personal details from her like a spy on a critical mission of grave political import.“Gabriel…” She shook her head, her temples throbbing.“This is truly a fight we can’t win.What are we going to do?”
“At least you’re back to considering courses of action rather than stewing in despair,” he noted in satisfaction.
“Are you managing me?”
“How am I doing?”He smiled guilelessly into the face of her suspicion.
She considered lying.Reconsidered.The dread and despair had dissipated.“Remarkably well, actually.”
“Glad to hear it.I’m learning from the best, you know.You talk me down from wizardly eruptions, and I haul you out of the bog of negative thinking.We make a good team.”
“And all this time I thought I was the fire to your water—that I’d be pushing you while you calmed me down.”
His smile widened with genuine delight.“We do that, too.I love that you’ve been thinking of us as a team also.”
Ugh.Now she was giving him ideas.“I haven’t been—”
He stopped her with a finger pressed to her lips.“Don’t ruin it,” he told her sternly.
She smiled, kissed his finger, and purred, “Yes, wizard.”
His expression hardened with desire, even as he shook his head slightly, sighing.“I think you will be my doom, though not in the way you mean.”
That sobered her.“We should discuss plans.We’ll have to—”
“Not yet.”He tugged at her lower lip with the finger resting there.“I want you to see something.”
She waggled her brows at him.“I’ve already seen it, though I agree it’s worth multiple viewings.”
Laughing, he turned her in his lap so she sat with her back against his chest.The sun was burning through the fog, making everything brighter, though still shrouded.“Not that, either,” he said with mock reproach.“I’m not at all clear on how you can go from murderously angry to heartbroken to flirtatious in such a short time.”
“I’m just naturally talented,” she informed him loftily.“And I wasn’t going to murder you.Just chop you into miserable pieces.”
“Wouldn’t that have the same effect?”
“Not if done correctly.I haveways.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Wise of you.Meanwhile, why am I gazing at a sea of fog?”
“You’ll see,” he murmured in her ear, taking the opportunity to trace the shell of it with his tongue, sending delightful shivers through her.His hands spanned her waist, pressing her back against him, slowly smoothing upwards to caress her breasts over her gown with teasingly light touches, too fleeting to satisfy.
“Are we having sex?”she asked, feeling like she needed to know.He’d gotten far too adept at teasing her and leaving her hanging, all in the ostensible name of building up her magic and keeping her healthy.
“Even in Meresin this is known as fooling around,” he replied, lips finding the pulse point under her ear and nuzzling there with erotic effect.
“That’s a no,” she decided on a wistful sigh.The knowledge didn’t do any good.It wasn’t as if she had it in her to put a stop to his caresses, nor could she force herself not to react.The desire washed over her, sweet and lazily warm in the aftermath of her tirade and subsequent crying jag.“I wonder if it’s partly the pregnancy,” she said aloud as it occurred to her.
“That we’re not having sex?I can promise it’s because the fog is clearing, and at any moment, we’ll be clearly on display to anyone who cares to look.”
“No, that I’m so emotional.I never used to be like this.”