Page 135 of A Promise of Peridot
My mind roared with utter silence, and I leaned onto the desk behind me. “You... love me?”
She strode forward, stopping just close enough for me to smell the orange blossom of her swaying hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. Back in Azurine, that night we kissed. Or at Briar’s. Or in your cottage earlier today...Stones, Kane. I had so many opportunities to be brave.” She stepped even closer. “But it would’ve made what I have to do impossible. And at the time—” She looked up as she searched for the right words. “At the time it felt like the only way to make it through was to not... want things. But I’m not afraid of hoping now, because of you.” She stopped to take a shaky inhale, left breathless by her own confession.
Relief soared through me like a bird on a tailwind. Light and smooth and—
And then fire thundered through my blood.
I dropped the flowers and captured her soft, full lips in mine, sighing at the taste of her on my tongue. Arwen’s startled eyes closed a heartbeat later, and she tilted her head, allowing me to press myself even closer to her. My tongue to lick over hers. I nearly groaned.
Such an uncanny feeling, to experience something I had fantasized about more times than I could count. The sincerity of it all. Of her feelings. Ofher.
I would consume her. Slowly. For days. Years. Hundreds of years.
She sighed into me, and my cock swelled with the need to be inside of her.
“Wait.” She pulled away, chest rising and falling. “What about the blade?”
Fuck the fucking blade.
“Right.” I stepped back, clearing my throat. “How did you put that together?”
“Mari mentioned something about the vault being close to the dungeons. Which made me think back to Halden’s explosion. That night, when your guards interrupted the forum, they said he had been trying to access Shadowhold’s vault. That got me thinking—had any other prisoners ever tried the same thing given the layout? The proximity? Back in the caverns Niclas told me Drake Alcott was sent to Hemlock Isle five years ago. It didn’t mean anything to me then. But now I know Hemlock Isle is a prison, and he went there around the same time you said the blade was stolen. And he was a great thief...” She shook her head. “When Ryder said Alcott had been imprisoned here in Shadowhold, I realized it was never in the Cavern or anywhere else. It went from your vault to Hemlock Isle, and it’s been there ever since.”
It made sense—when we sent Drake to Hemlock, I hadn’t even known the blade was missing.
“I’ll go retrieve it first thing in the morning,” I said, bringing my lips down to her neck. Her earlobe. She was so petite, I had to hunch almost comically. That was how few times we had kissed. How little I knew the shape of us together.
Not anymore. I’d memorize the way our bodies fit together. Sear it into my skin.
“You’re not going alone. I’m comingwith—” Her voice hitched as my tongue slid down her neck toward her collarbone and my hands found her ass. “You,” she hummed.
I chuckled into her skin, but she pushed me back and straightened. “I’m serious, Kane. Wherever you go, whatever you face, that’s what I’ll face, too. All right?”
“Yeah.” I grinned. “All right.”
“Good. Because that’s what I want. For as long as we have together.”
“We will have a lifetime. There is no other way this ends.”
She wrapped her hands around my shoulders. Olive eyes—whip-smart, fierce, fearless eyes—stared up at me. That gorgeous skin glowing in the light of the fading sun.
Her open, trusting, warm expression.
An expression of love.
I claimed her mouth with mine once more, cradling her head in my hands as I pushed her into the post of the bed behind us. Twining my lips with hers, fisting my hand in her silken hair, and trying wildly to align our mismatched hips—
Messy and eager and fumbling. Like a hormone-ravaged boy. Trying to get as close as I possibly could to her. To close every gap between us. But there was too much fabric in the way. I needed to feel her skin. I regretted every single decision in my life that led me to purchase the dress this morning. I abhorred the thing.
But I didn’t immediately detach from her to remove it. I couldn’t quite think straight—I couldn’t concentrate properly around her when shewasn’tpalming at my cock over my pants with her perfect little hands. Now it was a challenge in itself to string two coherent thoughts together.
My mouth moved down her neck, her skin tasting like creamstirred with sweet honey. Or the purest vanilla from a far-off land. I pressed my tongue against the sensitive skin under her ear and felt her shiver. Licked her collarbone indulgently until I was sucking her breasts over the fabric of her dress, my hands slinking up her back.
And she wasmoaning. Mewling as I worked her nipple, the dress growing damp but neither of us able to detangle.
I wanted to fuck her with my fingers. To plunge them in between the folds I knew would be plump and ready for me. Finding some semblance of discipline, I released her just long enough to yank the dress over her lithe shoulders, over her head, letting it fall to the floor in a heap. And then I stared at her, gawking shamefully like I had never seen a woman in her undergarments before.
Lurid thoughts danced in my mind.
