Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(62)

Perhaps that’s what being on the Outside was. It was listening hard to every sound and never breathing easy. Never relaxing. Never feeling warm. Never allowing yourself to believe that for one single moment you could be safe.

Always running.

My teeth clacked and I clenched my jaw until my face muscles ached.

I shivered from the cold. It had to be because I was cold. It couldn’t be my near brush with death. I shook my head slightly. I’d had close calls before. My life had become a series of close calls.

Fowler was there. I sensed him like my own heartbeat inside my chest. Somehow he had become a part of me. As intrinsic as the blood in my veins. It tempted me to stay, fixed to his side even though I knew what I had to do. That hadn’t changed.

“Here.” Fowler’s fingers brushed my shoulders as he draped a thick fur around me and I shivered for an entirely different reason. We hadn’t come into physical contact since he held my hand on the way back to the lift, and I felt the absence of his touch keenly. A physical ache that I had no right to feel, but it was there nonetheless. “Are you well? Do you need Mirelya to see to your wounds?”

I shook my head. “No, she’s done enough.”

He turned to move, leaving me alone in my room, but I reached out, grabbing his wrist before I could consider the wisdom of touching him.

“You came for me,” I whispered, my chest twisting with emotion as I considered what would have happened if he had been even a few moments later.

The bed sank with his weight beside me.

I felt a flutter of movement near my cheek and I lifted my face, but the touch never came. Instead it was his voice, as hard and final as a hammer falling, that reached me. “We need to move. It’s too dangerous to stay here now, Luna. Too many saw him chasing you. It won’t be long before they come nosing around.”

“You’re ready to go right now?” I shook my head, my stomach churning. This would take some planning. It would be harder to slip away from him when it was just the two of us on the Outside. He would track me down before I got very far. “Midlight is the safest time to leave, don’t you think? Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“Luna—”

I stopped him by pressing my fingers to his mouth.

“Tomorrow,” I insisted, my pulse fluttering at my neck. My stomach clenched.

This day would be the last I’d have of him. Perhaps it was selfish, even foolish, but I wanted it. One more day and night together for me to cling to during the days and nights I was on my own.

He’d brought me this far. He hadn’t wanted me with him in the beginning, but he cared about me now—at least whether I lived or died. Something told me I was one on a short list of people he cared about. Maybe I was the only one. My heart swelled, feeling privileged to have that.

“Luna.” My name sounded pained, strangled and choked against my fingers. “The things you do to me . . .”

“Show me,” I challenged.

“We can’t—”

“You mean you won’t?” I dropped my hand from his face. He didn’t realize this was all the time we would have. He was tossing it aside when I needed it to be everything—a final, sweet memory to carry with me.

I turned away, but then he spun me back around. His hands held me by the shoulders, then my face. Warm palms rasped against my cheeks, pulling me in. Those hands anchored me, holding me as his mouth came down on mine.

His mouth was all I felt. This single searing contact became my entire world. His lips on my lips, moving, caressing, sliding and slanting, giving and taking.

I clung to his shoulders, my fingers curling deep into the hardness of his body.

He lowered me back on the furs. I went willingly. He balanced his elbows on either side of me, careful not to crush me, but I wanted that. I needed the weight of him, all his warmth to envelope me.

He kissed me until my lips felt tingly and swollen and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t need to breathe though. I just needed his mouth. Him. My bones melted alongside my muscles. All of me felt like warm pudding, sinking beneath him.

My hands roamed, free finally to touch, free to feel and memorize all of him. My fingers tangled in the strands of hair that brushed his warm neck. I stroked silky tips, tugging gently.

He growled into my mouth and I swallowed the sound, taking it into me. My chest swelled and tightened. A sense of empowerment flowed through me, heady with the rush that I affected him. That I made him feel.

I shoved his jacket off his shoulders. He pulled back slightly without severing our kiss, allowing me to slide it the rest of the way down his arms.

I touched his bare throat, fingers gliding to the top of his chest, as far as his shirt would allow.

“Fowler,” I sighed against his lips.

He pulled back and I felt his gaze on me, his hands holding my face. His thumbs grazed the edges of my mouth. “I’ve fought this, Luna.”

“What? What is it you’re fighting?”

“You. Me. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way for anyone. Everyone that ever matters, I lose.”

The tightness in my chest turned into a throbbing ache. “So you’re saying that I matter to you?”

A shudder rolled through him that I felt to my very depths. “You matter to me. You’re the only thing that matters anymore.”

I smiled, trying to hide the curve of my lips with my hand, feeling like one of the lovesick swains in that book of poetry that belonged to my mother.