Page 101 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

Not everyone was quite as blatant with their feelings. Gwyn said very little, and though my lemmikki had shown up in the tavern with red eyes, she had let very few actual tears fall.

Still, it felt later than it was by the time we walked back to the castle.

More accurately,mostof us walked. Davin was toted all the way back by Gwyn, who, despite his protests, had pitched him over her shoulder with all the effort of lifting an unruly child.

Hearing the stories they told over more drinks at the tavern had been a glaring reminder of how different life here was. How different Rowan’s life would be, away from these people wholoved her, and openly grieved alongside her, in a kingdom that had known mostly full bellies and peace.

Not to mention the entire kingdom of people who wanted her dead, or worse. A nobler man would have begged her to stay here, but I had never bothered playing the part of the hero. I sure as storms wasn’t going to start where my lemmikki was concerned.

If she wanted to stay here, then she could damned well decide that for herself. I wouldn’t help her along the path of vowing her life to me while she spent it a kingdom away.

As for her safety… I would tear apart every person who looked at her askance until the staunchest soldier in all of Socair would rather peel his own skin away than muster up the nerve to speak her name.

I pulled a book from my trunk without looking at the title and climbed into the center of my bed, trying to dispel the thoughts running rampant through my mind. I was so engulfed in images of her that I nearly missed the telltale click of the passageway door. I set down the book on Lochlannian law, no doubt in my mind this time who it would be.

Sure enough, Rowan glided through the doorway on silent footfalls. If her presence had been expected, her attire was decidedly not. She wore nothing but a nightgown made of a sheer, pale material, her wild curls cascading down the bare skin of her arms.

I had conjured so many images of her in my mind, wondered more times than I wanted to admit what she might look like joining me in our bed on our wedding night, that I half wondered if I had already fallen asleep.

She had burst into my room unannounced on three occasions now, and every time she had come in prepared to do battle. Her features had been guarded, if not outright furious.

Tonight, there was something almost vulnerable in her furrowed brow and the storm that churned in her wide green gaze, in the silent way she stood in front of the door, drinking in the sight of me. The same energy that had crackled off of her this morning hummed in the air between us, potent and expectant as the night sky just before a strike of lightning.

The flippant greeting I was prepared to deliver died on my lips.

Rowan sucked in a breath, louder than it should have been in the hush that had eclipsed all sound and reason in the room. She moved across the room as though on instinct, her eyes never leaving mine.

My breaths were shallow, my heart beating a slow, erratic rhythm in my chest when she climbed onto the bed next to me. The thoughts that were whirling in my mind mere moments ago vanished in the wake of her bare leg sliding across my torso.

I didn’t dare to move or speak or breathe, to break whatever spell we were under. Whatever this was, she needed it. The control. The proximity.

I would have been lying if I said I didn’t feel it, too, the desperate need to feel her warmth against mine after a day that had been singularly focused on death, to know that she was safe and where she belonged.

With me.

Settling against me, she brought her slim hands up to my hair, raking her fingernails gently along my scalp like she was exploring and claiming in the same simple motion. It took every shred of my self-control not to pull her against me, but there was something almost fragile in her presence here, a tenuous, ephemeral thread that would snap under the weight of a single wrong move.

There wasn’t enough rational thought in me to wonder exactly why she was here—I wasn’t even sure she knew. Therehad been little I could do to ease the shattered expression she wore for most of the day, but this—this was something I could give her.

So I ceded the moment entirely to her, unmoving while her fingers traced along my skin, energy coursing from each point of contact through to my soul. A lifetime passed before she leaned down, her face hovering inches above mine, her breath mingling with my own.

Her ethereal green eyes blazed into mine with an intent I couldn’t quite read, a rare question I didn’t know how to answer. My heart forced out several stilted beats, and she didn’t move, even as the energy that thrummed between us crescendoed to an unbearable burning.

Every part of me needed to feel her against me, to taste her lips on my skin, to make her understand what she was to me without all the games and caveats baked into the words we hurled carelessly at one another.

I saw the need mirrored on her own features, but still, she was held back by a dilemma I didn’t understand.

“Lemmikki.” I meant the word as a question, but a plea slipped out unbidden.

Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, I needed her to tell me. To move. To do something besides torture us both with the same uncertainties that plagued our every interaction.

She squeezed her eyes shut on an exhale, a contradictory relief that was so palpable it was almost painful. Like she had spent an eternity dangling from the edge of a cliff only to finally let go, without knowing where she would land. If she would land at all, or if she would tumble into an abyss.

I wasn’t sure either.

All I knew was that she wasn’t headed there alone. I hurtled through the air right alongside her, losing myself in the intoxication of her lips on mine. The energy between us hummedin satisfaction and I lost the scattered remnants of self-control I had been clinging to.

I grasped her waist with all the gentleness I could manage, leaning into her touch as it lingered just above my heart. Abruptly, she pulled away, resting her forehead against mine.