Page 69 of The Wishless Ones
He was willing to give her anything. He nodded.
She ducked her head, her smile turning shy. “Me first?”
Jafar nodded. The evening breeze slipped through the windows, tousling her hair and painting it gold in the fading sunlight.
“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.”
Her voice was a deep, dark lullaby. Her words were a thousand and one scrolls unfurling inside of him, filling him to near bursting with their secrets.
Why not?
“To love is to live a life of exhaustion,” he said.
She ran her tongue along her lips. “So melancholy. Exhaust me then, ink boy.”
“Oh, is it my turn?” he asked, his throat hoarse with a knot, something heavy coursing through his limbs. It was weakness and power wrapped in one, an ache and a yearning.
And he couldn’t ask the questions he wanted to ask.
Instead, he closed the distance between them. She looked up with a gasp, exposing the smooth column of her neck. He wanted to bury his face there, nibble at the unblemished skin, make her gasp again.
Jafar didn’t need to be a prince. He would be a thief forever, stealing her breath over and over.
He was being selfish.
Her eyes darkened to a fathomless black, and when he opened his mouth to apologize, she rose on the tips of her toes with a strangled, impatient growl and pressed her lips to his. Her hands slipped over his chest, fisting his robes and pulling him into her. He gripped her waist to keep from tumbling into a chasm from which he might never return.
She was soft, warm, and enchanting, everything Jafar was not. Their bodies fit together like pages bound in a book. A mewl of a sound escaped her mouth, her fingers trembling and ceding control as they kissed. It was gentle, hard, rough, sweet, wicked.
Jafar had never felt so powerful.
She pulled back, gasping for air, gripping the wall to steady herself.
He wanted more. He wanted that power in his pocket, that control at his fingertips.
He had ruined her hair even more than the wind. He had altered the color of her eyes. It was delicious alchemy, and she was his beautiful destruction.
She touched her lips and took a step back. “That was…”
“Catastrophic,” he agreed.
Her answering laugh was breathless. It almost sounded like half a sob. “I—we should go.”
His mouth curled. “Or else?”
“Or things might turn indecent,” she whispered, and then she paused, her expression turning serious. “Jafar, there’s something you should—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. It was all he could do to stop from pulling her to him again. “Don’t. Don’t ruin this moment.”
And then he let her go.
Jafar sent the pair of attendants away from his rooms so he could dress himself, thinking about her the entire time. Yara. Their kiss. Their catastrophe. Jafar wasn’t even ashamed of how giddy he felt, howhappy. With her, like Iago, he didn’t have to worry about his work being stolen. He didn’t have to worry about lying.
There was no reason to concern himself with being second best. She was falling in love with him as he was with her, in a way that rivaled his love for knowledge. Her soul spoke to his much as the scrolls on alchemy had.
“Iago?” Jafar called into the emptiness. “Where are you, wretched bird?”
“Hiding so I don’t have to see your stupid lovesick face,” Iago called from somewhere under the bed.
