Page 98 of Kimiko and the Accidental Proposal
“What’s wrong?” Kimiko whispered.
He lifted his face. “You’re so vulnerable.”
“Far from it. You should see the added security at our place.”
“Personally,” he clarified.
“It’s not a problem.” She smiled and touched his hair. “You’d be surprised how safe most of us are, living beneath the notice of peer and predator alike.”
Quen wrapped his arms more securely around her. “I could give you a sigil to carry.”
“Our Amaranthine classmates would notice. It would lead to questions.”
“I’ll ask Michael to create something.”
“That would be easier to explain.” Kimiko tugged his braid. “But I wish you’d explain what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”
He hadn’t meant to interrupt. “All you need to do is accept.”
Kimiko shifted in his grasp, trying to communicate, but he had her by the hips. Like him, she had to resort to words. “Acceptwhat?”
“Me.” That came off sounding more profound than he intended. “Let me tend you, Kimiko.”
Her brows drew together. “You’re offering me my first taste?”
Quen hadn’t considered this situation in those terms, but she was right. “Just a taste. With your permission.”
Kimiko carefully pulled away, but then knelt with him. “Ready.”
Their hands sought each other. Their eyes closed.
He liked this calm, this closeness. But they needed trust to run deeper, bringing her light into his darkness, spangling his soul. Eloquence slowly enveloped her, tuning the howl of his wilder instincts to the note he’d found earlier. Harmonizing at first, then locking into unison.
She gasped.
Recalling all the ways Michael had been gentle with him, Quen held back all but the barest hint of his hopes, woven with a whisper of the awe he’d felt at finding a star-strewn comb upon his palm. He would be hers. He had been chosen.
Kimiko murmured his name.
“Yes?”
“Is it always so …?”
Eloquence held her close, touched her hair, kissed her cheek, and waited. So much depended on her next word. Like the grades he received in his new school. Like the ranking assigned to every reaver. Someone else was about to determine his worth.
But she didn’t pluck a word and pin it to him.
“I think,” she began solemnly. “I think I underestimated you, Eloquence Starmark.”
Something in her gaze thrilled him. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time, and it left him feeling exposed … yet hopeful.
“And I think,” she continued, “that I may have underestimated myself.”
“Oh?”
Kimiko hummed an affirmative. “As your suitor, I think I’d even tackle an impossible task in order to impress you.”
“Because you like a challenge?”
