I nodded, uncomfortable with the gratitude.
We parted ways with Alastir, walking across the banquet hall. “Is he leaving for Spessa’s End already?”
“While you were resting, I spoke with Emil. After what happened, we thought it was better if we traveled east in smaller groups to avoid drawing attention.”
“Makes sense,” I murmured. “You really think that the omen has to do with our marriage?”
“Could be,” he said, but we were nowhere private enough for me to point out that the marriage wasn’t real. Not in a way where it would usher in any great change.
Unless our plan worked. That would bring about great change.
My thoughts shifted to what else had happened in the room, hopefully dissipating the still-oily feeling on my skin. “The mother in there said the same thing as the woman in the Red Pearl. That I was a second daughter but not like I thought.” Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Alastir at the door. The poor man still looked like a breeze might knock him over. “I didn’t get it then, but now I think she meant I was second-generation.”
“What woman in the Red Pearl?”
“The one who sent me up to the room that you were in. Obviously.”
His brows snapped together as he looked down at me. “I have no idea what woman you’re talking about.”
“Really?” I replied, tone dry. “The one you had send me to your room. I think she was a Seer—a changeling.”
“I didn’t have any woman send you to that room, especially not a changeling,” he said. “I knew who you were the moment I pulled that hood back, but I had no one send you to my room.”
I stared up at him. “Are you serious?”
“Why would I lie about something like that? I already told you that I knew who you were that night.”
“Then how…?” I trailed off as Casteel hung a sharp left, pushing open a door and pulling me inside a room that smelled of soil and herbs. The door clicked shut behind us. I looked around, spying cans of vegetables, bushels of potatoes, and satchels of dried herbs. “Did you just pull me into a pantry?”
“I did.” Casteel’s chin dipped as he stepped into me. Dark hair toppled forward onto his forehead.
I stepped back, bumping into a shelf. Jars rattled. He was so tall, I had to crane my neck all the way back to meet his gaze. “Why?”
“I wanted a moment alone.” He placed his hands on the cupboard above my head. “With you.”
Senses hyperaware, I watched him lean in as a confusing tremor of anticipation coiled its way down my spine. “And you needed this moment alone in a pantry?”
He turned his head slightly, lining up his mouth with mine. “I just needed.”
Tiny shivers hit every part of me. I opened my mouth to tell him that whatever he needed didn’t involve him and me in a pantry, but nothing came out. No protests. No warnings. I simply stared up at him, waiting and…wanting.
“I know how hard that had to be for you.” His lashes swept down as his breath danced over my lips. “Going in there with your abilities, opening yourself up to their pain.”
My fingers curled around the edge of a shelf. “It was nothing.”
“That’s a lie, Princess.” His mouth was closer, just a breath from mine. “You did it even though you felt their fear and distrust. It was everything.”
I felt my lips part. “And that’s what you needed to tell me in the pantry?”
He shook his head, causing my breath to hitch when his lips glanced off the corner of mine. “I wasn’t done.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Please, continue.”
“Thank you for your permission,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “There are many times when I’m in utter awe of you.”
I stilled. Every part of me.
“I shouldn’t be surprised by what you’re capable of,” he went on. “What you’re willing to do. But I am. I’m always in awe of you.”
A tugging sensation in my chest stole a little of my breath. “Is that what you needed when you pulled me into the pantry?”
“I’m still not done, Princess.”
My pulse thrummed. “No?”
“No.” His forehead dropped to mine. “There is one more thing I need. Something that I’ve needed for days. Weeks. Months. Maybe forever.” The bridge of his nose brushed mine. “But I know you won’t allow it. Not like this.”
The pounding in my chest moved lower. “What…what have you needed for so long?”
“You.”
I shuddered.
“So, maybe, just for a few minutes, when no one is looking—when there’s no one but us—we can pretend.”
Leaning into the cupboard, I felt dizzy, as if I weren’t getting enough air into my lungs. “Pretend?”
“We pretend that there’s no yesterday. No tomorrow. It’s just us, right now, and I can be Hawke,” he said in the heated space between us. I shook once more. He touched my cheek, sending a bolt of awareness through me. His fingers drifted over my chin, my lower lip. “You can just be Poppy, and we can simply share a kiss.”
“A kiss?”
He nodded. “Just pretend.” His lips now a whisper against my cheek. “Just a kiss.”
I shouldn’t.
There had to be a hundred reasons why. It blurred the lines of who we were. I’d told him it would never happen again. He was using me. I was using him. Kissing wasn’t wise. Even with all that I didn’t know, I knew enough to realize that it never stopped with a touch of the lips, even when it did. There was always more. Wanting. Needing.
And I wasn’t sure how I even felt about him since my feelings toward him seemed to change every five minutes. But either way, I shouldn’t allow anything like this. If I did, everything would be harder, even more confusing than it already was. Tawny could perfectly sum up what it was now in two words: a mess.
But a woman was about to die.
Her mother said I was still Chosen.
A man in there didn’t want my touch.
Some in that room feared me.
Hated me.
I could still feel Lord Chaney’s teeth in my flesh even though there were no wounds.
I could still see the burning coal of his eyes, and feel how I was nothing more than an object to him. Food. Sustenance. A thing.
And I didn’t want to feel any of that.
I wanted to bask in Casteel’s awe of me, and maybe…maybe I already knew, deep down, how I truly felt about him.
“Just pretend?” I trembled as the tips of his fingers skated down the side of my throat, around to the nape of my neck.
“Pretend.” His lips hovered above mine once more, right there, teasing.
I closed my eyes, my voice barely more than a whisper. “Yes.”
Chapter 18
Like before, the night of the Rite, when we’d been under the willow tree in the gardens and I’d asked him to kiss me, he hadn’t wasted a moment.
Except he’d been Hawke then, and we hadn’t been pretending.
His lips brushed over mine, once and then twice, so incredibly soft and gentle that it threatened to unravel all pretenses. I shuddered and felt his lips curve against mine. I knew he grinned. I knew that if I opened my eyes, I’d seen that infuriatingly tempting dimple of his. The touch at the back of my neck and against my cheek, just below the scar, was featherlight as he seemed to map out the feel of my lips with his, slowly, leisurely reacquainting himself. Tiny shivers skittered through me.
But I wanted more. Already.
Impatience burned through me. Lifting my hands from the shelf, I gripped the front of his tunic and pulled him against me. “I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”
I shook my head. “That’s not what you can do.”
He chuckled against my lips. “You’re right. It’s not.”
Then he truly kissed me.
He claimed my lips as if he were staking a claim to my very soul. The possibility that he was already well on his way to doing so should’ve served as a dire warning, but I was far too immersed, far too gone at the feel of him, lost in how demanding his lips were. He tugged on my lower lip with his fangs, urging my lips to part. Gasping, I yielded to him. The kiss deepened, and his tongue slid over mine. I let out a little breathless moan against his hot mouth. The taste of him, his smell…all of him invaded me, scalding me.
We kissed and kissed, and I…I still wanted more. Wanted to keep pretending as liquid fire poured through me, erasing the icy touch of Lord Chaney, washing away the suffocating feel of the room where death had surely come and gone by now, and all the unknown of what awaited.
He knew this, sensed this, and he gave me what I desperately needed.
His hand finally, finally moved from my cheek, trailing down, smoothing over my breast. There was a reverence to his touch, as if he worshiped me as he slid his hand under the hem of my sweater. Flesh against flesh. My body jerked as his fingers skimmed over the patchwork of scars and then moved farther up, over the lines of my ribs, the bottom swell of my breast. I moaned into his mouth as his thumb reached the turgid peak. Sharp spikes of pleasure twisted through me.
He made a deep, dark sound that rumbled through me as the hand at my neck dropped to the small of my back. He pulled me away from the cupboard, against the hard length of his body, and still, he devoured me with his lips, branded me with his touch. The hunger in him should’ve scared me, but all it did was inflame the same need within me.