Page 37 of Reluctant Wizard

She gave a little self-conscious shrug. “Because I liked you. Too much. And it worried me.”

“Oh, my darling.” He combed his fingers into her silky hair, his heart swelling when she tipped her cheek into his palm. “Whyever would that worry you? I’m harmless.”

“Maybe that’s why,” she said, a raw vulnerability in her face as she gazed at him. No walls around her heart now. “I’ve all my life been around dangerous people. I know how to ward against that, how to perform the political dance, how to strive for power and supremacy. What I don’t know is how to be… I don’t even know what word I want. Normal? Human, maybe. How to be someone besides the heir to a high house, a powerful something someday whose job it will be to rule and crush the people beneath me.”

His heart literally ached for her—or something in the vicinity of his chest did. “That’s not a requirement of the job,” he told her gently. “You can head a high house without doing that, being that.”

She snorted. “Show me one.”

“Nic and Gabriel. Jadren and Seliah. Lady Harahel.”

“Outcasts, iconoclasts, and scholars,” she replied, but not unkindly. “Still, your point is taken. And mine is that I don’t know why I didn’t see you, except that I didn’t see anything except for a difficult and narrow road ahead of me.” She laid her free hand over his heart. “But I see you now, and I want you, Cillian. I want you to make love to me and show me how. You are experienced, yes?”

“Yes,” he got out past his newly thundering heart which seemed to have jogged up in his chest to lodge at the base of his throat. He set aside the memories of Szarina that threatened to flood him and taint this far more precious moment with Alise. He refused to let her memory ruin this. “Are you sure?”

Her lips quirked in wry amusement. “Are you going to make me say it three times to seal the charm?”

“It would help, yes.”

“I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure.”

“I think there’s some extras in there.”

“Really, really sure.” Stepping away, she tugged at his hand, and he followed her willingly this time, though not without trepidation. It had been a while, after all.

“I might not be very good at it,” he felt he should say. Total honesty and all that. Mitigate her expectations. “I’m quite a bit rusty.”

The smile she flashed him held a dazzling affection. “I’m sure it’s like redirecting an air elemental powering a carriage. Once you learn, you never forget.”

“I was never terribly good at that,” he muttered, coming to a halt beside the bed, facing her. At least he habitually kept his room clean and his bed made. A stack of books on the bedside table, yes, and the stained-glass shade on the reading lamp had tilted askew at some point. Funny that he hadn’t noticed it before.

“Like reading, then,” she amended with a knowing smile.

“I can’t remember a time I couldn’t read,” he agreed. As opposed to those first few fumbling attempts with Szarina, who’d mocked his clumsiness and ignorance. Don’t think about her, he instructed himself fiercely. She has no place in this bed.

“Well then, this will be the same.” Alise went to unbutton her shirt.

“Wait. Let me do that.”

Curious, she dropped her hands, watching him with those wide, dark eyes.

“First things first,” he told her, giving her a kiss that he’d meant to be brief, but turned lingering. Would kissing her ever feel like not a transgression, not something stolen and furtive and all the more precious for that? Not yet. Reluctantly pulling back, he dropped to his knees and extracted the spirit bottle from the pocket at the side of her leg. Handing it up to her, he smiled at her chagrined expression. “Tomorrow you deal with this, too, right?”

“If everyone will stop scheduling me to do other stuff.” She set the bottle atop the stack of books on the table, absently straightening the shade at the same time. Then she caught his expression. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll prioritize it.”

“Good girl,” he told her, and she shivered a little, giving him a tremulous smile.

“You’re still down there,” she observed.

“Indeed.” He slid her shoes off and her bare feet were trim, even dainty, with small, rosy toes that seemed ridiculously adorable to him. He wanted to kiss each one, but that could wait. Encircling her small ankles with his hands, he stroked his palms up her calves as high as her pants legs allowed, then transferred his touch to the outside of her thighs, smoothing upward over the subtle flare of her hips. Finding the bare skin of her waist under the baggy shirt, he caressed inward, marveling at the silky softness of her skin. Reaching the fastening of her pants, he looked up, aware of the nervous hitch in her breathing.

“Still good to go?” he asked her.

She nodded, a bit jerkily and set hands on his shoulders. “I didn’t expect to be so nervous.”

“It would be surprising if you weren’t.” Unfastening the ties, he eased the pants down, exposing her slim thighs beneath the long hem of the shirt. So unbelievably lovely. “Step out,” he whispered, bagging the pants around her ankles and waiting for her to get clear. Once she did, he tossed the pants aside and slowly stood, dragging light fingers along the silky skin of her thighs, loving the way she trembled, and how her liquid dark eyes gazed at him with utter trust and vulnerability. He toyed with the hem of her shirt, lifting it a little, tantalizing them both, while he studied her face. “Still okay to keep going?”

“You don’t have to keep asking,” she answered with a tinge of that imperious irritation he perversely loved.

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