The Wish Granter (Ravenspire #2)(78)

“No.” She moved closer to him, and he didn’t flinch. She checked the hall. Still empty. Checked the walls. Not breathing. Her voice barely more than a whisper, she said, “I was alone and afraid, but I can survive that. Especially knowing that you did what you had to do to stay here with me. And now he trusts me a little more. He didn’t find where I’d hidden the contract.”

Sebastian glanced at her chest, and Ari’s face heated. “No, it wasn’t . . . That’s not where . . . I hid it in a dusty vase just inside Maarit’s room. Last place he’d ever look.”

Sebastian jerked his eyes back up to hers and took a small step back. “I’m sorry. That was . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to notice anything.”

The misery disappeared from his face, replaced by mortification, but there was something warm in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Ari smiled as the fizzy tingling in her stomach spread to her veins, a welcome relief from the loneliness and tension of the past week.

His eyes swept over her with a faint hint of desperation. “I mean I was, um, noticing that I like your hair down.”

She patted her hair as if just now discovering that she hadn’t braided it—which was a stupid reaction, but somehow his words made her feel like whatever she’d done right with her hair this morning needed to be repeated every morning for the rest of her life.

The scent of scorched bread brought her up short. “Are you making toast?” She craned to see the stove behind him.

“Burning it, more likely.” He hurried to the stove, grabbed the tongs, and scooped the blackened bread out of its pan.

Ari glanced around the empty kitchen. “Where’s Maarit? It’s not like her to allow a decent breakfast to hit the table.”

“Teague said she isn’t feeling well this morning and is staying in bed.” He turned the sausage and poured a bowlful of beaten eggs into another skillet.

She joined him at the stove and sniffed appreciatively at the chives he’d sprinkled into the eggs as he put butter and two new slices of toast into a pan. “Mmm, compliments and a full breakfast. You sure do know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?”

“I know yours,” he said quietly without looking at her.

The heat from the stove had nothing on the warmth that rushed through Ari, rekindling the torch in her heart and igniting something deep within her.

Her breath caught, and Sebastian’s shoulders braced as if he expected a blow.

Longing spread through her. Somewhere along the way, between sparring sessions and long talks about everything and nothing, Sebastian had become something far more precious to her than a weapons master turned friend. She wanted him to look at her the way he had when he’d seen her in her ball gown. She wanted his fingers on her cheek and his arms around her waist. She wanted his smiles, his silences, and his kisses.

Stars help her, how she wanted his kisses.

It was lunacy. She was trapped in Teague’s villa, one word away from dying, and the choices she was making would either ruin her keeper or destroy herself. She had no right to want more than friendship with Sebastian when she wasn’t sure she’d live to see the next morning.

“That was . . . I’m sorry. Again,” Sebastian said into the silence, and the reserve in his voice galvanized Ari into action.

“Only apologize if you didn’t mean it,” she said, and waited, hardly daring to wish for him to turn toward her. To show her his face so she could know if he longed for her too.

He was silent for an agonizingly long time, his body held perfectly still the way he did when he was looking for threats in a new environment. She willed him to trust her. To trust himself.

To want her.

Finally, he said, “I shouldn’t say things like that to you.”

“Were you telling the truth?” She reached past him to flip the toast before it burned, and then stirred the eggs.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Forget waiting for him to turn toward her. Ari wiggled between him and the stove, prayed her hair wouldn’t catch on fire, and looked up to meet his gaze.

His brown eyes widened, and he started to step back.

“Please,” she said, “stay.”

He stayed—separated from her by a breath of space, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his lips parting as he stared at hers.

Every part of her strained toward him, but she held still. Waiting. Letting him get comfortable with almost touching. With staying.

Her heart was thunder, her blood lightning, and the rest of the kitchen fell away as he slowly bent his head toward hers.

She swayed toward him and pressed her palms to his chest. “Sebastian,” she breathed.

“Princess Arianna,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes.

“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Teague’s cold, polished voice spoke from the doorway.

Sebastian jerked back from her, his body instantly tense as he spun to face Teague. Ari glared at the fae.

“Just for that, you don’t get any sausage.” She turned toward the stove and plated the food while she waited for her skin to cool and her heartbeat to return to normal.

Under no circumstances was she going to deal with Teague while her body still wanted Sebastian.

“We have errands to run. Eat quickly,” Teague said as he took an apple from a bowl in the center of the table, sat down, and took a bite.