Fireblood (Frostblood Saga #2)(25)

Then, just as I started to turn, his face twisted, as if something inside him had suddenly broken. His hands gripped my wrists and pulled, but I was already pitching forward, my hand clutching his shoulder. Our lips met with jarring force, the reverberation landing in my jaw. And then the angle righted itself as he tilted his head to welcome the invasion.

He was so cold against my tongue that I shivered. He tasted like a winter morning, of icy water and mint tea. I drank him in with thirsty sips and he nipped my lower lip in punishment and reward.

When his fingers dove into the hair at the nape of my neck and his open mouth slid to the sensitive spot under my ear, I forgot everything except need, scrambling to throw my leg over his hips so I straddled him, my chest leaning against his. It took a moment for me to recognize his sharp inhalation as pain. He was injured and I was hurting him.

I subsided instantly, crumpling next to him like a falling scarf, settling slowly into stillness. His hand grabbed mine and drew it to his mouth, continuing the kiss in a safer, softer way. His lips rested against my wrist, where the red vein still throbbed with passion, soothing the skin while the pulse beneath slowly returned to normal.

We stayed that way for a long time, silent except for breathing that went from ragged to even. I shifted so that my head was pillowed on a spot low enough on his chest that I didn’t touch the bandage. His hand settled on my head, stroking my hair. My scalp tingled with pleasure. After a while, the silence thickened.

“Why do we always go back to hurting each other?” I asked in a small voice, hoping not to destroy the fragile truce.

He paused long enough that I started to worry. “Because we feel too much,” he said roughly.

I nodded, my head still tucked against his torso, relieved and full of understanding. “You hate it. Feeling.”

“No, I don’t,” he denied instantly. “I hate… being at the mercy of it. I hate when I can’t tuck the feelings away because they’re too strong.”

I lifted his hand and played with his fingers, thinking how beautiful they were—strong and capable and dusted with fine brown hairs.

“You’d be better off with someone who”—I swallowed—“didn’t make you feel so out of control.”

“Maybe,” he said after a moment, making my heart stutter sickly. “But I wouldn’t choose that.”

I said very quietly, “You might have to choose that.”

He had a duty to his people, to his court, but I wanted to hear him say that he didn’t want the perfectly bred Marella, that he’d rather have me. But that was unfair to ask of him now, when I was about to leave. I closed my eyes tight, tight, and tried not to think about how much easier that choice could be in my absence.

“We have to let each other go a little,” he said very softly, as if reading my mind, confirming my worst fears. “We both know that the future… We might have choices ahead that we can’t predict now. We have to allow each other to make them without blame.”

He said it so gently, tenderly. Somehow that made it hurt more. Why did he have to be so reasonable now, when I’d finally surrendered to feeling? I couldn’t hold back the tears, my body shaking a little as I tried to quell them.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he said unevenly, “but I’ll go mad if I try to keep holding on. You are flame, Ruby, and fire can either be free or it will be smothered. The last thing I want…” His voice broke, and the sound was like a kick in my chest. “The last thing I want is to smother you.”

I sat up and turned away fully so that my back faced him, not as a dismissal, but because I needed the space. I didn’t want to think about how right he was. His hand came out and smoothed my back, first pushing my hair out of the way, then touching the base of my neck, his fingers lingering over each vertebra on the way down.

I turned back to him and grabbed his hand, pressing my lips to it, then resting my forehead against his knuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He twisted so that his fingers touched my cheek and my lips rested in his palm. After a minute, he took a shuddering breath.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said softly, “but I’m so tired. I just… I can’t bear much more of this.”

I knew he was injured and sore and exhausted, but it still hurt to be pushed away. I had to be mature enough to leave him. To stop begging him, in all my subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to give me reasons to stay. If I backed down now, I doomed us all with my cowardice.

But I couldn’t help asking quietly, “If—when I come back, will there be any place for me? With you?”

His voice was broken granite. “Always.”

Emotion filled my chest, so much I ached with it. I couldn’t ask for more than that.

So I gave his hand a harsh, almost bruising kiss, stood, turned, and walked to the door. I didn’t let myself look back. I knew I wasn’t that strong. It felt like lead weights had been tied to my feet. I stepped from the room, shut the door, and moved carefully down the hallway, feeling as if I’d left behind some vital and irreplaceable part of myself in the room.

The sky was gray outside the windows. The light that flowed into the hallway was gray. Even my skin, when I looked at my hand that still wore the ring, looked a sickly gray.

But the ruby in the ring shone as if the very heart of fire lived inside of it. And my heart gave a struggling little pulse of heat in reply.