Page 10 of We Steal The Flight

“I’ll do anything I can to protect you, because you’re ours. You’ve always been ours.” He curls his hand into my hair. “I see you, Juniper, and you see me. Curse or not. Time stolen or not. We find each other.”

My heart skips a beat in a way only Maz can make it.

I lay my head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around my waist. My back is pretty much healed now—sore, but not too bad—and being in his arms is so much better than sitting out here alone. I watch the stars with him, wondering if Kane and Vale are watching them too. “I have to go to them. I just…I know I don’t have the luxury of time for once. I won’t use the tarot cards to steal more time, and I won’t let anyone take my memories. This is the best chance we have had to be free, and I will figure out a way to get us all together again. It’s selfish that my first thought is saving my bonded and not finding a way to protect the people here. They deserve freedom just as much as we do. The Umbral Authority are powerful, and they still hold the academy, but their grip on this world is slipping.”

“You never give up.” His words warm my heart even in the cold air. “It’s one of the things I loved about you from the beginning—that you never gave up. Even when Vale embarrassed you in front of that entire training room, you stood tall and unbroken. I wanted to punch him for that move, but there was just determination on your face. Then you hexed all his weapons like a fucking genius, and I knew from then on, no one would compare to you. You’re smart, beautiful, determined and brave. The goddess had blessed me with you as a bonded.”

“Kane said he’d never seen Vale beaten at anything.” I chuckle as my cheeks warm too.

“You came to me, showed me what it was like to see, and never once judged me for any of the stupid mistakes of my past. I could live a million lifetimes and never once deserve a bonded like you.” I lift my head to look at him, feeling his words in my chest. In my heart. “Even when I was having these crazy flashbacks of kissing you in my dreams and…I’m connected to you in a way I could not explain. You had every right to keep me at a distance, but you didn’t. Why?”

“Because I think Black’s not my only mate,” I whisper. “Your curses don’t affect me because I’m your mate. Black could touch me from the beginning because of the mate bond, and you can see me, only me, because of it too. Kane’s blood could have killed me before, and it never has done… The truth was there for us all along, Maz. I’m more than your bonded—I’m your mate.”

I lean over, climbing onto his lap. He moves his hands up the side of my waist, brushing over my ribs and up to my jaw.

“I knew it from the moment you were hurt in training,” he tells me. “I felt the bond…and you are my mate. I didn’t want to scare you with the knowledge, and I knew my smart witch would figure it out all on her own.”

“Now that I’ve guessed…” I brush my lips across his, feeling him tense under me. “Make me your mate.”

The rain finds us before he even kisses me. It comes without warning—one moment the night air is thick with snow, the next the sky simply opens up and pours, cold and relentless, soaking through my clothes in seconds. I gasp at the shock of it. Maz doesn’t even flinch. He just looks at me through the downpour, rain running in rivulets down his face, his jaw, the column of his throat, and something in his expression makes my breath catch in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

“We should go inside,” I whisper.

“Probably,” he agrees, and doesn’t move an inch.

Neither do I.

The abandoned town sprawls out below us, lights smearing through the rain, blurred. Up here, it feels like the rest of the world has simply ceased to exist. Like there is only this rooftop, this rain, and Maz staring at me like I am the only thing worth looking at.

He closes the distance between our faces slowly, his hand coming up to brush the wet hair behind my ear, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone. His touch is so careful. So deliberate. Like I am something he has been waiting a very long time to handle gently.

“Juniper.” Just my name. Just that, in that low, rough voice, and I feel it all the way down.

“Don’t say something sensible,” I warn him.

The corner of his mouth curves. “I wasn’t going to.”

He kisses me while the rain hammers down around us, and I stop feeling cold entirely.

His hands slide into my soaking hair, cradling my head, and there is nothing tentative about the way he kisses me—it is thorough and deep and consuming, like he is making absolutely certain I understand what this is. What we are. I grip the front of his shirt with both fists and kiss him back just as hard, rain streaming down both our faces, pooling between our lips, and I have never in my life felt less inclined to be anywhere else.

When he pulls back, we are both breathing harder than we should be.

“I’ve been yours for so long I can’t even imagine you being mine,” he says against my mouth. Rain runs over his lips as he speaks. “I’ve wanted you so badly, for so long, that even letting myself want you as my mate seemed risky because I do not deserve you.”

“I know,” I whisper. “But, Maz, you deserve me. So much more than I deserve you back. I want you as mine, as my mate, and for us to face this war as one.”

Something shifts in his eyes at that—something that was already wound tight snapping loose entirely. He pushes me backwards until my shoulders meet the low stone ledge at the roof’s edge, rain falling in silver curtains all around us. He looks down at me in the dark and the wet like a man who has made a decision and intends to see it through completely, and it’s all I want.

His hands run down my sides, over my waist, finding the hem of my soaked shirt. He peels it over my head without hurry, and the rain hits my bare skin, but I barely notice because he is looking at me in a way that makes me feel like the most vital thing on this rooftop. The only thing.

“You’re beautiful.” Not flattery. Just fact, stated plainly, as his hands move across me with a reverence that undoes something deep in my chest. “I’ve thought about this”—his thumbs brush over my nipples, and I inhale sharply—“more times than I’m going to admit to you.”

“Admit it anyway,” I breathe.

He lowers his head, and his mouth closes over one nipple, and I stop being capable of words entirely.

He takes his time. Of course he does. Maz does everything with that same unhurried, devastating focus, and he turns it on me now fully and completely. His mouth and hands work across my skin while the rain pours down on both of us, warm where he touches me and cold everywhere he doesn’t, and the contrast is maddening. By the time he drops to his knees on the wet stone in front of me, I am gripping his shoulders like the rooftop might tip.