Page 47 of Into Ember

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“Easy. I just pretend you don’t—”

I press my lips to hers.

She goes stiff for exactly one heartbeat — I feel it against my mouth — and then she doesn’t. Then her hands are in my shirt, and they’re not pushing, they’re pulling, and everything goes quiet.

Everything.

I didn’t know I could do quiet.

Her mouth is soft and furious at the same time. Of course it is. She kisses like she argues.

I get a hand in her hair and her back off the bark, and somewhere between one breath and the next that sound starts up in her chest again — low, rolling.

Only it’s not a growl this time.

She’s purring. Against my chest.

For me.

I could burn down a city with what that does to me.

I pull back before I can’t. Just far enough to see her — eyes still closed, lips parted, and for the first time in two days, no comeback anywhere on her.

And because my mouth has never once protected me from anything, what comes out next is quiet, and it isn’t a joke.

“I just wish you had built the nest for me.”

Chapter 18

Elara

“I just wish you had built the nest for me.”

He meant it. I don’t know if he meant to say it out loud, but I know those words are true.

That is the most real thing Gunnar has ever said to me. I can feel it. It’s not a line — I know his lines by now, I’ve been collecting them for two days — and this isn’t one.

I look up at him and there’s no grin. No smirk. No glint, no angle, no next move waiting behind his eyes. Just the truth.

It’s everything.

He’s close. Still so close. Warm and solid and completely serious for the first time since I met him, and—

I’m kissing him.

My hands are in his shirt and his back hits the tree — I did that, I pushed him, when did I decide to push him? He groans like I knocked something loose.

His mouth is hot and sure and opens under mine, and something cool and hard clicks against my teeth—

The tongue ring.

I forgot about the tongue ring.

I will never forget about it again.

He kisses like the fight isn’t over. I have read this kiss a hundred times, and every single author undersold it. The metal drags slick along my tongue and my whole body lights up at once — pulse jumping in my throat, in my wrists, lower, heat rolling down through my stomach and pooling somewhere that has opinions now. His hands find my hips and pull, and then there’s no space left between us. He’s hard everywhere. Chest, arms, the rest of him — which I am definitely noticing, pressed against my stomach — and my chest is humming along.