House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(54)

“Convenient,” he says. It’s a bit muffled and I start to laugh breathlessly.

First his mouth, then his tongue. My thighs are jerking in a spasmodic dance over which I have no control. A pillar of ice, then fire, then ice runs through me. The silent laughter turns to a series of hiccups.

He flicks the skirts back up, and draws away to stare at me. “Laughing? Really?”

I lurch forward, knocking him backward and bashing his head against the back of the carriage seat. “Sorry,” I hiss into his hair, still gasping for breath, and half-laughing. I’ve straddled him, and this – this is how it should be. I kiss him, and taste salt and musk and me, and then his hands are tangled in my hair and we stay like this, the carriage floor rattling under us, trembling my thighs around him, until we draw to a halt outside the Pelim offices.

“This isn’t done,” I say as I draw away from him, and stand before the coachman can open the door.

He looks a little too flabbergasted to respond, but he nods, and manages to pull himself into some sort of order just as the door is flung open.





THE HOUSE IMAGINARY


We end up on the storeroom couch, still fully clothed. We only kiss when the doors are closed. Perhaps, like me, he is still embarrassed by this sudden silent confession. Jannik presses me down onto the thick covers. His weight is comforting. He’s heavier than Dash was, a little taller, and he kisses differently. There’s something almost subversive about the way he kisses, something sly and sharp and fox-like that makes me feel like I am charged with static. I match my kisses to his, my breathing, then pause to gently take his lower lip between my teeth. This is me, saying mine.

I think he understands. Jannik pulls his head away and trails kisses down my throat, down to my chest. He frees my breasts from the low-cut bodice, flicking at my nipples with his tongue.

I shiver, arch my back. Something is off, leaving me feeling out of kilter. Taking a deep breath, I roll over to my side, pushing him with me. Still not right. “Sit up.”

He follows my command without arguing, and seems utterly unsurprised when I straddle him again. The feeling of rightness is back and we sit like this, tongues and fingers and lips touching. He opens his eyes when my one hand slides down to unbutton his trousers.

Still dressed, I lift myself over him.

His breathing is short, almost harsh. “Like this?”

I nod.

He slides in fast, both of us slick, his hips jerk once, and I want so much to just let myself go and be real and together. I have done this only with one other person before, but in my memories I squeezed it down to a meaningless dry nothing. With Dash, I was tying myself to him for safety. No matter what excuses I gave myself I knew that deep inside me I was using his bed sheets as ribbons to bind myself to the Whelk Street house. If I had him, I had a place to stay. I think I even convinced myself that I was in love.

I think I even convinced myself that he was in love.

Dry beach sand in my palms, pale and dead.

Jannik is fever-hot, pale as that sand but far more alive, filled with secrets. His hands are damp with heat, his fingers caging my cheeks, thumbs tracing under my eyes. His wool trousers are scratchy-rough against my thighs, a grounding counterpoint.

This is nothing like what came before, the way I want to remember it.

It’s different and maybe better, maybe sour-sweeter. I want to taste it slow, savour the plum-ripe moment. It’s the rightness of this finally happening and I want to cling that feeling, revel in it. I want to wrap it around me, fall into it, drown.

Instead, I make myself grip Jannik’s arms hard enough that I can feel the bones, and shake my head as I pull his hands down to his sides. He stops, his chest heaving, and I can feel his control as he shivers. Both of us still, our breathing the only thing that remains in time.

I mirror him, cupping his face in my hands and keeping his head in place. In the yellow fatcandle light his eyes are dark, the indigo almost black. I’ve never looked this closely into his eyes, at the tiny crystalline fractures, at the way they lighten toward the centre like ice around his dilated pupils. I kiss him once, very softly, and whisper. “I’m going to save Isidro,” I say. “There’s a way.”

He stays very still, waiting.

It takes all my hard cruelty to tell him how. “I’m going to use you as bait.”

Jannik blinks.

“Don’t say anything, let me explain.” My earlier conviction is gone. Like my desire, it’s faded. “I need to get into House Eline, and what better way than to give you to them?”

“What better way indeed.” He shifts away from me, and we are no longer joined.

“Jannik.” My hands are still on his face, and the magic is thrumming against my palms, stronger than it was before. It feels like I’ve trapped a mouse.

He twists his head and shakes free of my grip.

My heart speeds up, and the heat rises in my cheeks. “There’s a way for me to know where you are, at all times.” Let me, let me, let me. Listen to me, to what I’m asking without asking.

“No.” The third eyelids snap closed, and I am left staring at the mucous-white skin, wet and raw.

“Please listen–” My courage spikes, driving me to admit my reasonings. This is just a cover, I want to tell him. I’m really asking this for me, not for Isidro. But I don’t get the chance to explain myself, perhaps because I never wanted to. I let it slip away, and my regret is shot through with relief. Let him think me cold and hard, it’s safer that way.