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Not with a place to call ours, a sanctuary in this world that had not been built for us – a home that would not be carved out with blades and magic like the Mother had suggested, but grown and nurtured, like a secret garden hidden from the prying eyes of the world.
Blue for healing.
My heart swelled against my ribs as the thought took root.
‘And that,’ Creon muttered, leaning over to wrap his arm around my waist and scoop me up from the grass, ‘is a lot more like it, cactus.’
A quivering laugh bubbled out of me. ‘We really did win, didn’t we? We really …’
‘We did.’ He pulled me into his lap as if I wasn’t bloody and bruised and altogether grimy, arms wrapping around me from behind. His warm lips found the hollow of my neck, the sensitive spot just beneath my jaw. ‘Or you did, arguably. I was mostly decorative for a significant part of the process, but—’
‘Hey!’ I made an unsuccessful attempt to glare at him; his arms wouldn’t allow me to turn more than a fraction. ‘You told me to fling around corpses! You dealt with those traps! You threw a bloody dagger into her chest!’
He nuzzled a slow line down my neck, his breath heating every inch of skin he passed. ‘In a very decorative way.’
I scoffed. ‘Looking pretty while throwing a blade doesn’t make the blade useless.’
‘Hmm,’ he murmured against my skin, his rough voice vibrating through me. ‘A very interesting argument. I can’t wait to fight about this for the next hundred and fifty years.’
‘You have a week to agree with me before I start getting violent,’ I informed him, digging my nails into his thighs, fighting to keep my breathing under control as he kissed my shoulder with slow, languorous lips. ‘We can fight about cat names for a century, if you need to be petty about something. Not about the question whether I would have survived until this day without you, to which every halfwit knows the answer is a resounding negative.’
He nibbled at my earlobe. ‘Sometimes I truly don’t know what I did to deserve you, Em.’
‘I think it’s the sex,’ I said earnestly.
He froze in surprise, then burst out laughing and flipped me over in a single smooth motion, pinning me in the grass, his lean body straddling me. ‘Is it, Your Majesty?’ His voice had abruptly gone low and husky; his wings swept out on either side of his shoulders, casting shadows over our entangled bodies. ‘Because in that case, I’m rather sure I’ve been neglecting my duties to an outrageous extent. You’ll have to excuse me for getting distracted by futilities like battles and strategy.’
It was getting harder and harder to breathe, my suppressed laughter squeezing my throat, the light in his eyes enchanting enough to drive the air from anyone’s lungs. Biting my lip was all I could do to keep my face straight and get out an almost unruffled, ‘Don’t worry, Imightstill forgive you.’
‘I’m more grateful for your mildness than you’ll ever know,’ he muttered, lowering his face to a hair’s breadth from mine.His hand drew a leisurely line over my body, feathery fingertips lighting my skin on fire. ‘Need me to demonstrate just how agonisingly sorry I am, then?’
I tangled my fingers in his silky black hair and pulled him into a kiss.
He met me in a clash of ravenous desire, lips claiming mine with a hunger that matched my own, tongue taking possession of my mouth in an instant. His fingers clawed into my hip. His weight pressed me into the grass, locking me between him and the earth, and I arched into him instinctively – an unthinking reflex to get closer,tighter, as our bodies melded together.
His laughter was almost a growl. ‘Looking for something, cactus?’
‘Your modesty,’ I panted, unable to help myself as I clasped my fingers into his lower back. ‘Not very successful so far, but who knows …’
He tilted his hips in reply, grinding himself against me just once – the bulge in his trousers an unmistakable punishment against my thigh, insistent and promising. I gasped in spite of all my more dignified intentions. He pulled away just as swiftly, allowing a whisper of fresh air to come between us – smirking down at me as he hovered over me, lips flushed red, a wicked glint in his eyes.
‘And you’re sure that’s all?’ he muttered sweetly.
Oh, the urge to claw that grin off his face … And yetthisfinally felt like victory – not the slitting of throats and claiming of crowns, but this simple game of body against body, the world reduced to nothing but the heat under my skin and the taste of sin on my lips. Gone was the rustling of the reeds. The distant shouting. The lake lapping gently at the shore beside us. Each of them belonged to a battlefield that seemed ages beyond me already, and I …
I was barely even here anymore.
I no longerneededto be here, and it was that baffling realisation that sparked the next surge of brilliance – a thought that had me prop myself up on my elbows beneath him and murmur, ‘Do you think they would miss us in the city for the next twenty-four hours or so?’
His scarred eyebrow quirked up. ‘Ambitious.’
I huffed a laugh. ‘I’m nothing if not confident in your superior virility, but I’m thinking you might want to demonstrate it elsewhere.’
‘Ah.’ He rolled off me with a lazy grin, shoulders bulging as he settled onto his elbows too. His shirt hung loosely around his muscular frame, revealing his collarbone, half an inked scar, a tantalising glimpse of taut bronze chest – as if even now, moving away from me, his body was still whispering at me to change my mind and tear all that unnecessary linen off him. ‘I see. So where are we going?’
‘Depends,’ I said slowly. ‘How do you feel about some flying?’
And that, it turned out, was all the information he needed, those dangerous, smouldering dark eyes reading my mind as usual.
