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“I’ve seen inside your head,” he said. “I know what that did to you. Know something of it myself. Some prisons are worth self-destruction to escape.”
“Thank you.” I said it quietly, but with firm intent, knowing full well what such an expression of gratitude could mean.
He inclined his head, accepting it.
“You might have told me, though, about finding the earth,” I added, with some asperity, to lighten his grave mood.
“I couldn’t, no. First—” he raised a brow to stop my argument in its tracks, “—some teachings cannot be spoken or shown. You might consider them a sort of final exam. If a student cannot find the connection on their own, they will never be able to use it. Second, you werethinkingtoo much. Sometimes teaching means shoving a student in the right direction and hoping she trips over it instead of her own wagging tongue.”
“Ha-ha.” Something occurred to me. “Who taught you?”
“Why do you ask?” he returned smoothly. Too smoothly.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” I strung out the words, watching his face for the slightest twitch, chasing the fleeting thought through his mind. “It washer, wasn’t it?”
Rogue gazed back, a world of memory passing behind his eyes. My turn to wait him out. With a mental sigh, he let me see. The boy running on the beach. Raven’s feathers flying through the air, dense, denser until they blackened the skies. Crying out, the boy stumbled and Titania, all lissome loveliness and sugarcoated poison, smiled down at him. Swathed in impossibly long silver hair, fine as tinseled spiderwebs, she picked him up and took him by the hand, her delicate, multijointed fingers weaving with his, making him hers.
How I hated that bitch.
I looked around the arena with new appreciation. “This was her castle.” That, too, showed in his memories. “At least, one part of it.”
“It’s mine now.” He said it with implacable firmness, making me wonder how he’d managed to drive her out. A surge of pride filled me, for his indomitable strength of will. And deep sympathy for what he must have suffered, belonging to her then and again so recently. It made me love him all the more.
Something I hadn’t been very good about showing him. So many fears and suspicions holding me back. I really needed to get over it.
I crawled the few feet over to him, the dirt soft on my declawed fingers, the skin there sensitive as new flesh, and pushed him onto his back. He gave way, curious, not quite certain of my intentions. Straddling his narrow hips, I perched on his flat abdomen, running my hands over his shirt, then parting it down the center. With the gleeful delight of a kid on Christmas morning, I pushed the material aside and bared his skin.
“Asyouare mine now,” I told him. Titania would have a serious fight on her hands if she tried to take him away from me ever again.
“Is that so?” he asked, with something of a pleased look.
“Yes. Don’t argue. I’m tired of you playing hard to get.”
He laughed and lay back, letting me explore him as I hadn’t been able to this past—had it only been a day? Surely it had been longer. At some point I’d likely need to sleep. For the time being, however, I felt wildly replete with life energy.
And I wanted him.
“No one will disturb us here, will they?”
He shook his head, slowly. “The door answers only to me. And, now, you.”
“Good.” I tugged at his sleeve and Rogue laughed again, a breathy sound, full of rising desire.
“It would be easier to magically dispense with it, sweet Gwynn.”
“Shut up.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “I’m enjoying doing this for myself.”
Obligingly, perhaps a bit bemused, he levered up so I could pull the shirt off entirely. While he was upright, I freed his hair from the leather thong and brought the silky mass of it around to drape over his shoulder on the unpatterned side of his body, before I made him lie back again. Arranging the glossy locks into a long, trailing fan over his lean chest, I indulged myself in its texture, compared to the brushed satin feel of his skin.
Freed of the claws, I savored the winding of the thorned lines covering the left side of his body, how the black-patterned skin felt no different than the golden-hued rest of him, Following the path up, over his collarbone, throat and jaw, I finished at the cut-glass edge of his lip, where that vine ended in an infinitesimally fine point. Turning his head ever so slightly, Rogue pressed a kiss to my fingertip, his dark blue gaze finding mine and burning.
He lifted a hand and touched my left temple, tracing over my cheekbone to the corner of my mouth, with the same grave tenderness. Like him, I showed my internal animal on the surface of my skin. It had started as a branching line on my temple, silver-white. By the lingering glide of Rogue’s finger, it had grown larger and more complex.
Soon it would engulf my body, too, leaving me unrecognizable.
“I will always know you, my Gwynn. Never fear that.”
He pressed his other hand between my shoulder blades, urging me close enough for his lips to reach mine in a long, soul-searching kiss, then slid down to my thigh, pulling up my skirt.
