Page 53 of The Mirror in the Mountain

Why had I ever thought I could keep this from him?

“Eva,” he said gruffly, my name cadenced like a demand.

My traitorous lips wobbled, but I pressed them together in a thin line. Bash’s eyes narrowed when I didn’t respond, a storm building around his pupils. I wondered if he could feel my unrest over the bond or if it was just written across my face. Because I knew what I should do.

And I had never been more terrified.

Bash’s hand moved to brush a strand of hair blowing across my face behind my ear, his fingers trailing down my cheek. My chest tightened as I remembered the way he had done so in that lake, long before we had acknowledged what we were to each other. He was studying me so intently, I was suddenly grateful he could only feel my emotions, not read my thoughts. That he couldn’t uncover exactly what I was trying to hide.

“Sometimes I worry that you don’t know that you don’t have to do any of this alone,” Bash murmured. “That there’s no burden I wouldn’t take on with you.”

Guilt flared within me. My mouth opened, but I found myself unable to say the words to deflect his concern. Not when they would’ve been a lie.

His features turned stark, his eyes flickering with something like hurt. “Talk to me. Please.”

It was the plea that almost broke me. “About what, exactly?”

Bash let out a low, humorless laugh. “You may have been raised in the mortal realm, but you’re pure fae. Would it kill you to just give me an honest answer?”

I took a half-step backward, attempting to put some distance between us. Bash pulled me right back, one arm looping around my waist. His other hand caught my face, shadows swirling in his eyes, the touch grounding me despite myself. I closed mine, unable to look at him as I tried to find the right lie.

“What is it?” His whole body was thrumming with tension now, shadows licking up his wrists. “What’s wrong?”

There was something crumbling in me. The urge to let him in warring with the knowledge that if I did, there would be no way I could go through with it.

“It’s nothing,” I hedged, the lie twisting in my chest. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters because you’re shaking, Eva,” Bash said, panic creeping into his voice. “It matters because something is upsetting you, no matter what it is.” His grip tightened protectively. “It matters because you’re mine.”

My heart broke a little, as I desperately tried to hold on to my resolve.

“Hellion, you should know by now that I want your good and your bad,” Bash murmured. “Your nothings, your anythings, and absolutely everything in between.”

“It’s just…” My voice trembled. “I’m having a more difficult time than I thought with the idea of what we have to do next. What I need to do. And it’s hard not to…be back there, with him, when I let my thoughts wander. Especially now that we’re about to seek him out.”

I hated lying to him, even if it was only a half-truth. The unwanted shadow of Aviel’s presence—the feeling of his hands on me, the fear those pale blue eyes instilled—still haunted me like a wraith I couldn’t exorcise. But I knew the guilt Bash harbored over what he hadn’t been able to stop, just as I knew I had succeeded in derailing his too-pointed questions by using it against him. I winced at the mix of rage and devastation mingling on his face, his remorse streaming across our bond with renewed force.

Taking a measured breath, I held it before exhaling to the same, slow four-count, trying to slow my racing heart. “I appreciate you talking it out with me though.”

“And you’re sure that’s all?” Bash swept his hair back with a hand. “Is there anything I can?—”

“Bash,” I said imploringly.

“Eva,” he shot right back, clearly unwilling to let this go. “Just tell me what you need…please.”

My unfocused gaze zeroed in on his face. “You.”

I pushed him back against the tree trunk, its leaves shuddering at the impact. The morning light disappeared as I wrapped us in a cocoon of my magic that mingled with the mist—a flurry of blood-red leaves decorating the dark as they fell all around us. His breath hitched as I lowered myself onto my knees, my hands already fumbling with the laces of his pants. My hand wrapped around his hardening cock, Bash’s groan rumbling through me as I took him into my mouth.

Maybe it was cowardice to want this distraction rather than face my supposed fate head on. But I didn’t want to think about what could very well be my death. And if I did have to die to stop Aviel, then I didn’t want to waste another second with myanima. I refused to live another minute without his hands on me, his body entwined so deeply with mine that we could never be taken from each other ever again.

I wanted to lose myself in him—in the taste of him down my throat, in the feel of him filling me so completely I couldn’t focus on anything else. Needed the respite from the thoughts that had chased me from his arms once already this morning.

“Eva…” Bash’s moan as I sucked him deeper traveled through me. “Gods, you’re perfect.”

Bash pulled me to my feet. I let out a soft whine at the interruption before his mouth found mine. His fingers flew to unbutton my pants, and I blocked it all out—so completely that I could almost pretend to fool myself along with myanimaas I let myself feel nothing but pleasure and lust and that endlessneedfor him.

Winding my arms around his neck, he lifted me against the tree trunk, my bare thighs wrapping around his waist. And when our bodies joined, all I could think about, all I knew, was him. How right he felt inside me, how much I needed him—how forever wouldn’t be long enough.

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