Page 7 of Invocation

How could she begin to answer?

She studied his face, lit with the blue light of the mage torch. She couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. He looked… serious. She could not guess what he hoped to hear her say.

She’d done it because that moment had sent her into a deeper and more horrifying depth of Panic than she’d ever experienced. It had yawned before her, a gaping void of despair, of knowing he was about to die and that she was powerless to stop it. The suddenness and inevitability of it, the years-long seconds of knowing what was coming and having to watch and wait for it to come, had been torture.

She would have done anything, in that instant, to stop it.

It had been a panicked, spur-of-the-moment reaction that had been more instinct and wild emotion than anything. But even now, after everything had calmed down, the thought of losing him frightened her.

Until now, she’d tried not to think about that fact, not too loudly or for too long, because if she dwelled on those thoughts too much, she’d have to acknowledge they were real.

And then where would she be? A jobless, homeless Ardanian woman on the bad side of the law, with far too strong an attachment to a Varai man. There was no future in that. Pursuing one could only end in failure and misery.

She couldn’t want him like that. She didn’t want to want him like that.

But she did. When had that happened?

Aruna let out a bitterly amused breath at the stretch of silence. He pointed to the word in the book again, giving her a desperate look.

She took the book from him. “You don’t know what it was like to see you that way,” she wrote.

“I do know what it’s like,” he wrote back indignantly.

Words failed her. She dropped the light and lifted her hands to his arms, holding him by the shoulders. She wasn’t brave enough to speak aloud the things she was thinking—or write them down.

She brought her hands slowly to either side of his face. His eyes burned into hers, unblinking. Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones and his head tilted very slightly to lean into the touch. Her fingers brushed over his strange pointed ears and into unnaturally oil-black hair.

Gods, he was beautiful. She wondered if he realized.

He stepped closer to her, putting his back to the soft glow of the mage torch and framing her in black.

She stood pinned between him and the wall, his darkness and warmth around her. His head tilted down, hiding his face in the dark, but she could feel the closeness of him, could feel his breath on her skin. She waited, hardly breathing. He took a breath that seemed anticipatory, hesitating.

He’d asked her why, but he already knew. They both knew. They both knew they both knew. The silence felt painfully heavy with that unspoken knowledge.

She felt his fingers twitch against her side. Then he dropped the book beside her light and leaned in.

His lips brushed hers as his hand pressed against the small of her back, pulling her into him. She let him part her lips, let him press between them.

His hand rose and knotted in her hair as his tongue brushed hers. She arched into him as twinges of heat ran from her throat to her sex. There was a spark of pain beneath her bandages, and she flinched. Aruna stopped, startled, and began to pull away, and she pulled him back impatiently.

She slid a hand between them and cupped the hard outline of his cock through his pants. He gave a soft groan into her mouth, and kissed her harder.

She stuck out a foot to kick at the fallen mage torch, and after a few tries, it turned off. Blinded in the dark, she started to fumble with the ties on his pants until he caught her hands and pulled them away.

He held one of her hands back against the wall, and with his other he hurriedly unlaced her pants. He slid a hand under fabric, his hand cool against her bare skin. His fingers brushed lower, his touch electric.

She bit her lip as a finger sank into slick folds. He pulled back to tip his forehead against hers, watching her react to his touch. A second finger joined the first, pressing deftly over sensitive skin and drawing pleasure from her with each stroke.

He murmured something to her. It sounded like a question.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. Whatever it was, yes.

Her every muscle had gone tight with need. Her free hand pressed against his unyielding chest to steady herself. It was all she could do to keep her feet under her. His presence was suddenly overwhelming, covering and pressing against every part of her.

She threw her head back, panting, eyes closed. The rest of the world faded away and all other sensations grew distant—except for his body against hers and those fingers insistently, expertly, stroking that most intimate part of her.

His hand lifted from her wrist and found the back of her neck, and his lips pressed into the hollow above her collar bone. He said something to her, quiet and urgent. The words vibrated through her throat. His fingers slipped over a part of her that sent her over the edge.

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