by Imogen Sera
She leaned her head against him as she looked up at the balcony. He’d told her before how sheltered he’d been as a child— she could only imagine what this run down looking building must have meant to him. Freedom to live as he wished, freedom to choose, freedom to just be.
“I love it,” she murmured.
“Me too,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mira giggled the whole way down the hall to their bedroom, tired and happy and tipsy. They’d been out for a long time, and had spent the last several hours in a nice sort of bar with a piano player and a bartender who was happy to serve her as much wine as she wanted. She clasped Tarquin’s hand the whole way, and thought how pleased she was with herself for using the cold as an excuse to hold it that morning. She liked his hand in hers, and she wanted to get used to the feeling.
When the bedroom door was shut behind her, she launched herself at him, her arms around his neck and her body pressed against his, and when he lifted her to him she gave a little sigh of pleasure. She kissed him sweetly, not his mouth, but his forehead and cheeks and nose and jaw and eyelids. He laughed as she did, and turned his head slightly to catch her lips with his, and then the playful pecks turned into heated kisses. She moaned into his mouth, and their lips touched and tongues tangled and bodies pressed together. Their usual urgency wasn’t there, replaced by something more intimate, more sure that they had time. There was no danger of one of them coming to their senses and leaving before they could each reach their own heated climax.
Mira undressed him first, dancing out of the way each time he reached for the hem of her shirt, and then dropped to her knees in front of him and took his rapidly hardening cock into her mouth. She treasured the sound he made as she kissed along the length of him and swirled her tongue around the head. When she closed her lips around him and sucked, she couldn’t help but to look up at him, and the look on his face as he watched her was so heated, so warm, that she had to look away to keep her balance.
With a sudden growl, he hauled her up against him and held her there for a minute. He bent to kiss her again, leisurely and sweetly, and she melted into him so thoroughly that when he lifted her from the floor and brought her to the bed, she felt incapable of moving on her own. He covered her and kissed her hard, and then found the button on her pants and they were cast aside quickly. She lay on her back, and he nudged her knees apart until she was spread before him. As he lowered his head between them, she hissed at the first touch of his tongue on her tender flesh.
He licked her thoroughly, through her folds and around her clit and probing, just slightly, into her entrance. When she held his hair and beckoned him, he slid a finger into her, and then another, and fucked her with his fingers while he suckled on her clit. She came apart furiously and thoroughly, and he licked her and thrust his fingers into her all the while. When she stilled again he slowed his caresses, and then his mouth and fingers traded places. She moaned at his light touch on her tender clit, and couldn’t stifle the groan that went through her when his tongue entered her, sweeping along her walls and making her writhe on his face. It took very little time for her to come again, and then he was holding her hips tightly while she shuddered, clenched around his tongue.
He kissed up her abdomen slowly, peeling her shirt off as he went, and then removed it entirely. He licked at her nipples before moving back up to her mouth, and then he kissed her so tenderly that her eyes burned and she didn’t know why. He positioned himself over her, his mouth on hers all the while, and when he pushed inside of her she felt as deliciously full as she ever did, but his movements held none of his usual frantic urgency.
Afterward, he pulled her to him, his chest sweaty and warm and solid under her cheek. She didn’t bother to protest, didn’t want to roll away. She was tired of running from him, and he seemed to be here, offering himself to her. So she turned her face slightly to press a kiss against his chest, then ran her fingers up and down his abdomen in a gentle caress. His hand was threaded through her hair, cupping the back of her head, and the other reached around to hold her hip. Her leg was thrown over his, and his warmth beneath her compelled her to press further against him.
“Mira,” he murmured, and she was almost afraid to look up at him and acknowledge the sweetness of the moment. It was much easier to just accept it as it happened, and then move on as if it hadn’t. She decided to be brave for once, though, and turned her chin up to him.
“Hmm?” she acknowledged, her heart racing and the heat in her belly churning.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to be capable of saying anything, and just leaned forward to press a kiss on her brow. Her chest squeezed painfully at that. He’d tried for so long to just show her affection, and she’d pushed him away, over and over and over again, without acknowledging that most of the reason she’d been mad was just that he’d said the wrong name. It had hurt, and it had been her first time, but she hadn’t ever even told him the reason she’d pulled away so hard. After, she’d convinced herself that he was incapable of ever loving again, of ever opening his heart again, and instead of recognizing what should have been so obvious to herself, that he was grieving and not capable of making decisions like that, she’d pushed him away further. All he’d needed was patience, maybe some affection, and she’d shoved him away from her in the most painful way she could muster.
Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, heartbreak for him and anger at herself, and when he noticed and asked her what was wrong she just shook her head. “I just want to hold you,” she said, and she did, moving so that her arms were around his neck, and his head rested on her shoulder. She ran her hands over his shoulders, his back, and pressed her lips to his forehead and cheeks and nose, over and over again. When she felt something hot and wet on her chest, she didn’t have to wonder what it was; she took a deep, shuddering breath.
She held him to her all night.
Mira was happy when she woke up, with a sweet ache between her thighs and a warm shoulder under her cheek. Morning sunlight streamed in through the large window, and when she chanced a look up at Tarquin he was already awake and watching her. It was strange for affection to feel so unfamiliar with someone she’d been intimate with so many times, but she had to remind herself that this was okay, that she didn’t need to roll away and pretend it hadn’t happened. She’d been so afraid to give in, to accept his repeated attempts at affection, but the way she woke up and the way she remembered the previous day made her very happy that she had.
She smiled up at him, and when he pressed his lips to her brow and traced lazy circles on her back, the remaining tension that she held vanished. She settled back against him, enjoying the simple tender touch of him in a way that she’d never allowed herself to before.
She’d been frightened, she acknowledged to herself, because she’d been half in love with him before he’d ever touched her, before they’d left Dragongrove. His kisses at first had thrilled her, but then left her disappointed that he seemed so ashamed to be seen with her. That he wanted no more touching than heated caresses. When they had finally had sex, Mira had been hopeful as his heated touches turned softer and his gaze less cold, but then he’d called her Aurelia and ruined everything. She didn’t want to just be an empty vessel for him to project his mate onto.
He’d pursued her, oddly and persistently, despite the fact that they were fucking all that time. She hadn’t had the energy to deal with it, though; to constantly analyze if he wanted her, just Mira, or if he just wanted anyone so he could pretend he wasn’t alone for a little while. She’d shrugged off his arm, and turned her face from his kiss, and tried not to laugh at the ridiculous things he said. It was hard, so hard, because underneath was still that girl who’d been as dazzled as she was when she saw her first dragon, and if she was honest with herself, was still half in love with him.
So she treasured his touch on her back, and the way he pulled her even closer as they laid together in the morning light and the way he seemed regret
ful when he told her that he needed to go into the city that day, alone, but that he would miss her and see her soon.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As Tarquin stalked along the city streets, he hated himself. He tried not to think of the sweet kiss Mira had left on the corner of his mouth, despite the fact that he could still feel it there. He tried not to think of the way her breathing had evened and slowed the night before, and the way she’d melted against him in her sleep, and the way that he’d held her to him and whispered his love into her hair when he was sure she was asleep. He tried not to think of those things because they all made him seethe with anger at himself.
Mira couldn’t be his, as much as he liked that thought, and he couldn’t be hers, because his mate was dead and waited for him on the other side. He’d thought that he’d been able to put it behind him until Mira had pulled his head down and pressed her lips against his ear and whispered to him, in an action that was identical to something Aurelia had done thousands of times. He’d wanted to kiss Mira, and he’d wanted shove her back and curse her for her cruelty. It wasn’t her fault, she hadn’t known and couldn’t have possibly done it on purpose, but the sweet tug on the back of his head had pulled him right back there— right back to the day of her death, and the last thing she’d ever whispered to him.
And then Mira had smiled at him, her lovely, increasingly frequent smile, but all he could think of was Aurelia’s joy as she’d whispered it, and his sorrow and horror only a few hours later. He’d held Mira all night and wished away his past, and then felt monstrous for even contemplating that. He was the only remaining connection to Aurelia— and to the tiny life she’d only just discovered she had carried.
And every time Mira allowed his touch, and he thought to himself that maybe he could move on and be happy again, he had to remind himself that he was Aurelia’s, because by remaining hers he kept her in this world, in some small way. She’d taken half of him to the grave, so he owed it to her to keep half of her here. He felt as if he were being torn between this world and the next, and some days it seemed like it would be so much easier to just give up and slip into the next with his mate.
The worst part of it was that the day before, when he’d seen Mira watch the city in a way that he’d never seen her do anything before, he’d thought that that was it, that he was in love, and there couldn’t possibly be a more thorough betrayal of his mate than that.
He was so distracted that he almost missed where he was going, in one of the decidedly more dangerous parts of Amling. He’d been here before, as a younger man, to a place that you could spend a night with a woman if you were charming enough, or if you had enough money. Tarquin had never been charming.
It was a sleepy establishment by day, and the man he was supposed to meet with information about his brothers was nowhere to be seen, so he ordered a drink and sat by the fire, which helped somewhat to heat the drafty building. He tapped his fingers on the table in impatience, eager to have company beyond his torturous, loathing thoughts.
Two drinks later, a man strode directly to his table. Tarquin could smell that he was a shifter, and there was something familiar in his face, but his overgrown beard and the tattoos covering nearly every inch of visible skin would have been something Tarquin would have remembered.
“You have news,” Tarquin said as the man sat.
The bearded man watched him for a moment. “It’s nice to see you again, Tarquin,” he said. “I killed your brother.”
It didn’t last. Mira had known it wouldn’t, but she’d been so desperate to believe that this time it could, that this time he could love her, that she ignored all of the reasons why he never would.
He’d been… sweet with her, that next morning, but after that everything had gone to hell. Because at breakfast he sat away from her, and had a far off look in his eyes. He’d been gone the rest of the day and after he’d returned, he hadn’t even pretended that things were different now.
Each time he avoided looking at her or touching her or speaking to her at all, she’d felt her fragile happiness crumble under her feet. Each time he left a room as soon as she entered, she found herself enraged, at him and his stupid mate and most of all at herself. Because she had known that it would go this way, and she’d ignored it, and now that she was totally and completely his, he didn’t want her.
It didn’t make her sad, she just felt pissed off. So after several days of being avoided, after several days of him being absent entirely from their shared room— she had no idea where he was sleeping, and she didn’t really care— after several days of being something to be ashamed of, she left the house early one morning, before the sun was up.
He hadn’t wanted her in the city on her own, had worried that she’d get lost or harassed, which made her enjoy it even more, just to spite him. She’d bundled herself thoroughly, because from her window she could see a glittering layer of frost covering the world. She glared at her stupid gloves, the ones he’d found for her, but pulled them on anyway.
It was early enough that the city was still quiet. She had a vague feeling that she was in an entirely different world, and not just because of the small group of winged women she’d passed quietly. There was no hum of conversation, no din of loud work, just quiet and peace and a sense that she could blend in here, that no one knew she didn’t belong.
She found a bakery that was open, so she sat at a tiny table tucked next to the window and drank tea while picking at a pastry.
She considered Amling as she looked out the window into the city. She liked it there— much more than the palace, and infinitely more than her family’s little farmhouse. She could do anything there, be anyone. As she watched the large variety of beings pass by the window outside, more and more as the sun crested over the horizon, she began to invent histories for the particularly interesting ones. Before long she found that she was inventing a history for herself. She was lost in the possibilities, in the chance that she didn’t have to be just Mira. How hard would it be, she wondered, to disappear here? She could find work; she’d seen half a dozen shops asking for help on her short walk already. She could rent a room, stay here, and be happy.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an angry infant, and she turned to glance at the counter, where she saw the backs of a couple, severely mismatched in height. The man towered over everyone, really, and she wondered vaguely if he was a shifter. The woman was short, especially next to the man, and a river of silver flowed down her back.
“Laurent,” Mira heard the woman coo, “it’s alright, sweet boy. You’ll be eating in a moment.”
She bounced the child that Mira couldn’t yet see, and then turned in a circle to soothe him—
“Annie?” Mira found herself exclaiming, hardly believing that she could actually be in the same place as the woman she’d known, so briefly, at Dragongrove.
It must have been Annie, though, because she whirled around wildly, searching for the source of her name.
Mira waved slightly, her hand tentatively in the air.
The silver haired woman swept across the room to her little table, her red haired son on her hip. “Mira?” she breathed. “You are last person I expected to see here.”
Mira smiled pleasantly. “I was just thinking that.” She gestured to the empty chair across from her.
“What are you doing here?” Annie asked, sitting down. Mira didn’t miss the way that Augustus watched her warily, as he stood next to the counter.
“Having breakfast,” she said, then smiled vaguely at her own stupid joke. “I came along with Tarquin, trying to figure out some… thing that he’s said very little about.”
“Tarquin?” asked Annie. “Are you and he…?”
Mira shook her head. “No. I was just… bored. He invited me along.”
“I see.” She bounced little Laurent on her knee after he let out another bored shriek. “Well, I’m sure we’ll need to see him. Where are you staying?”
“With a man called Cyrus
,” she said, “he has a ridiculous compound just east of the city. Tarquin’s been largely absent lately, though, so it might be a day or two before I can tell him you’re here.”
“I’m sure Aug can find him, now that we know he’s here.” She studied Mira for a moment. “You look awful,” she said with the frankness that had attracted Mira to her in the first place. “What’s been going on with you?”
“I had a late night,” Mira shrugged. “I’ve been living at the palace. It’s… monotonous.”
Annie laughed, then launched into a detailed explanation of everywhere they’d been and everything they’d seen over the last nine months. They’d been dispatched by the king to find the missing twins, and the latest whispers they’d heard had sent them to Amling. Augustus had pulled a chair over and brought breakfast for his wife and son; the former picked at hers daintily and the latter chewed his into a gummy mess, dropping big pieces on his father’s lap. Mira tried not to let her nose wrinkle as she watched.
They said goodbye after they’d eaten, promising to find her within the day at Cyrus’s house. Annie hugged her with a fierceness that contrasted with their short friendship and long separation, and Mira was almost embarrassed by how much the affectionate embrace comforted her.
