Page 126 of A Heart of Bluestone

I make a face at it, then brace myself for the counterattack.

It doesn’t come.

Dray crouches down beside me.

He braces his forearms on his knees. “Or because this is a maze, and you are drunk.”

It takes me a moment to still the dizziness swaying through me.

I slump onto my side.

His eyes, like ice-blades, rinse me over. He loosens a soft sigh before he reaches out for my face.

I flinch at his touch.

But no pain nips at me.

Rather, the back of his hand glides from my sweaty forehead to the high bone of my cheek.

“Did you mean to aim for me?” he sighs, but there’s a nostalgic hint to his tone, one that has my tummy flipping and my heart shredding.

I burp in answer. Not like I meant to, I just parted my lips to speak, and it happened.

Hell, if my mother and father saw me now, I would be sent to live with Grandmother Ethel for the rest of the year.

That’s a spine-shuddering thought.

She would have me stand as stiff as a statue in the coldest room of the manor, a stack of tomes on my head, and recite the ancient bloodlines until my voice turns hoarse and I pass out.

Still, I would rather her be the one to find me in the maze.

Anyone but Dray. Even Grandmother Ethel.

Dray runs his fingertips down my cheek, as if stroking me,soothingme. A stoic mask is fitted perfectly onto his painfully beautiful face, the fullness of his pink lips, the pinched tip of his nose, the smooth beige of his complexion that darkens around his chiselled jaw.

“I don’t need you to help me,” I groan and tug away from his touch. I only manage to move an inch before a dizzy wave strike me down, and I roll onto my back. “Leave me alone.”

I gaze up at the stars, a smear that blurs the longer I look.

“Leave you out here?” The tender touch of his fingertips glides down the side of my neck. There, it lingers. Takes me a moment to think that he’s caressing the bruises he left on my flesh. “Prey for an aspirer.”

I scoff. My chest jolts, and the pain is instant.

I swallow back the singe of sick. “Your fiancé is with an aspirer right now. Shouldn’t you be rescuing her?”

“Asta is no one’s victim.”

My answer is soft, “I’m yours.”

A flash in his eyes. “Not tonight.”

Dray leans closer and slips his arm under me. The tug of his hold lifts my back from the ground.

A groan is my answer.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “You’ll freeze out here.”

I reluctantly sling my arm over his shoulder. He pulls me to my feet. Well, he pulls meup. Mostly, he’s supporting me.

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