Page 36 of Reluctant Wizard

Disappointed irritation snapped into her gaze. “Fine. If it’s too much to ask, forget it.” She yanked out of his grip and lunged for the door.

Growling with a frustration that was an echo of hers, he leapt before her, preventing her from reaching her exit, and somehow ended up with her pushed against the wall. She stared at him in shock, eyes wide and dark. With his hands on her slim waist, he became keenly aware of the thrumming of her nerves, her narrow ribs flaring with hard, fast breaths, her heart pounding in a rhythm to match his own. “Are you sure?” he breathed, his lips already lowering to her tempting mouth, wanting, needing.

“Yes. You are the one hesitating.” She slid her hands up his chest, making him shudder. How many times had he fantasized about her touching him exactly this way? Tipping her head to the side, her lips curved into a sensual, challenging smile, and she dug her short nails lightly into his skin through his shirt. “You know you want to.”

He did. Abandoning all good sense, he loosed his restraint and closed the brief distance, pulling her hard against him and relishing her gasp of surprised desire, along with the delicious feel of her slight body, so delicate and yet blossoming with magic. A contrast there, between the birdlike bones of her petite frame and the robust power of the magic contained there. It billowed around and through him, roses in brilliant shades of scarlet and crimson and a bloodred nearly black, bursting into bloom, sunshine dancing over his skin and permeating his bones.

Kissing her, holding her, felt like embracing the font of life. Like a hot summer afternoon, she infiltrated him, illuminating the dusty corridors of his scholar’s mind and magic. He felt as if he, himself, might burgeon into someone hotter, more vibrant, charismatic, and full of shimmering life. In Alise’s arms, it seemed, he could become anyone at all.

Slowing, realizing he could relax, that no one would happen upon them, not like before with the frenzied, forbidden rush of the stolen kiss in the library, certain in the knowledge that she wanted this too, he allowed himself to savor her. Alise melted against him, braced by the wall behind her, pulling him ever closer with clinging, urgent hands.

“Cillian…” she murmured against his lips, her breath a sweet sighing.

“Yes,” he answered, as if she’d asked a question. And perhaps she had. Her body fit just so against him, her curves and lines aligning with him, as if they’d been crafted precisely for one another, for this.

Drawing away just bit, Alise cupped his cheek and gazed up at him, her depthless eyes showing her shining, loving soul. They shimmered with trust, he realized.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked on a hushed breath.

“You can tell me anything,” he answered promptly.

“Do you know what frightened me most about Gordon Hanneil’s threats?” She searched his face, a wary hesitation in hers.

For her, he refused the immediate anger, wouldn’t allow the tension that wanted to flood his muscles. He’d obviously never been a fighter, always the boy with his nose in a book, so the raw, raging impulse to find Gordon Hanneil and beat him to a bloody pulp with his fists alarmed and shocked Cillian. He didn’t know how he’d accomplish it, but he could envision the moment. Not to murder him, but to punish and disable. Gordon Hanneil would face Convocation justice. As would House Hanneil. Cillian would see to it.

But for her, he set all that aside and stayed loose, embracing the woman he loved more than all the world, giving her what she needed. “What?” he asked, just as softly. Whatever haunted her, he would listen. He could give her that much.

“That… Well, if he’d made good on his threat, to twist my mind against me, and…” She stopped, chewing her lip, hesitating over the words.

“You don’t have to say it aloud,” he told her, understanding. “I know what you mean.”

She nodded in relief. “That he would have been my first. Sex. You know. Pretty much first everything. And I didn’t want that.”

“It wouldn’t have been sex. What he threatened you with was violence and violation.”

She smiled, slightly, fingers caressing his cheek. “You know what I mean. Physical intimacy.”

“Yes.” He suspected he knew where she was going with this. And he didn’t know what his answer would be. Should be. Caught between his longing and his caution, the only thing he could say was her name. Her beloved, lyrical, and lovely name. “Alise…”

“I want it to be you,” she said simply, easing out from between him and the wall, taking his hand and leading him toward the bedroom.

“I thought your demands included only gingerbread and a kiss,” he joked weakly, still profoundly torn, his body eager, his heart overflowing, and his mind whispering urgent cautions. This was a bad idea. The wrong thing to do. Except he couldn’t quite remember why.

Alise glanced back over her shoulder at his poor joke, and paused, a slight frown of concern marring her clear forehead, drawing a line between her winged black brows. “I’d imagined the rest would follow on to the kiss-request. Do you not want to? Not want… me?”

“Oh, darling.” Still holding her hand, he eased closer, folding the distance he’d allowed to stretch between them. “I want you like I want air. Have done since the first time I laid eyes on you, since I first sensed the sweet bloom of your magic. But I worry.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t worry,” she observed solemnly, but with a glint of humor dancing in her black eyes.

“Fair,” he admitted. “Still, I have good reason. I need you to listen.”

“Tell me.” She turned to face him, listening with gratifying attention.

“I fear this is a reaction on your part,” he explained, cautious of eliciting her ire again. Or hurting her, accidentally making her feel rejected. “You didn’t want this from me before. Any of it. You barely thought of me as a friend, let alone as a lover. I’m concerned that your very real and understandable terror of what could have happened is driving you to take drastic action. That this isn’t something that you’d want, that you would ask from me, if you hadn’t been terrorized and traumatized.”

She waited a beat, making sure he’d finished, he realized. Then dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “I understand why you’d think that. And I can’t really argue otherwise. I don’t know why I didn’t fully see you before—except that it was as if I had been asleep. Those things I thought about before all this happened, that I believed were so very important, none of them matter now. You’re right: I didn’t see you as a lover. I held you at arm’s length as a friend because…”

“Because?” he prompted, when she didn’t finish.

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