Page 20 of Try As I Smite
Not a question this time. More like an accusation.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I promise I didn’t know that was you.”
“But you saw my future,” he insisted, a note in his voice off. Too intense. Too…something.
She shook her head. “I saw flashes. Results. More than I saw you. Or I would have recognized you when we met…formally.”
His thick brows lowered over eyes still intensely blue. But he nodded slowly, seeming to accept her word. “You were in the dark, with that hood over your head,” he murmured, gaze skating over her features. “I never saw your face.”
“I—” But what else could she say. Delilah stared back, waiting. Waiting for him to say something else or drop it or look away. Or for the blackness to return and take them somewhere new. What else in this moment could her mother possibly need them to understand?
“You changed my life that day,” Alasdair said in a voice gone gruff. Red flags of color appeared over his cheekbones, the skin drawing tight. “That prediction…it made me who I am today.”
A dizzying rush of—Pride? Thankfulness? Neither made sense—waylaid her, and Delilah had to force herself not to look away. “I didn’t make you who you are, Alasdair,” she said quietly. “It was always there, that potential future. Always part of you. I just told you not to doubt it.”
A protector. The prediction rattled around inside her. A good man. A rare person she could put her trust in.
I wish to all the gods I could help you.
“Did you ever think of me after that?”
The quiet question caught her raw.
“Sometimes.” She smiled. “I wondered what had become of that boy. If he’d turned into the man I’d seen in those flashes.”
Hell, he’d become so much more based not just on her research of him recently, but on what today had revealed. On the way he’d held her when she’d been hurting, even as angry as he was with her. The way his concern for his people was almost palpable in his frustration to get through this.
The way her body came to life with every damn touch.
Alasdair stepped in to her, framing her face with his hands, sending sparks of need along the sensitive nerves of her skin, his blue eyes so intense her heart ratcheted up, electricity singing through her blood and wakening a part of her that only he seemed able to bring to life.
With that kiss. Now with a simple look.
“I’m not a boy anymore,” he said, import in every syllable.
Then, holding her gaze, he slowly lowered his lips over hers. But he paused before he touched her and she found herself swaying in to him, reaching for him.
“I thought of you,” he whispered, a heartbeat before pressing a soft kiss to her lips.
Chapter Five
Who the hell knew that nirvana came with the taste of cherries and the softest lips?
Or that what felt like a hundred years after fighting beside that mystery woman in the alley, Alasdair would be truly a man in his own right, master of his domain, and kissing that woman here. Because damned if he hadn’t wanted to kiss her again since the first time.
He’d dreamed of her…for years.
Delilah didn’t passively accept his kisses. She leaned in to him, fingers spiking through his hair, kneading his scalp like a cat, making small noises that sent him into hyperdrive. Passion and perfection in his arms. None of that icy control when he touched her, almost as though there were two halves to her.
That she let him this close, let him see this other side fully, a hell of a lot more than the glimpses she’d inadvertently given him before now, reached inside his chest and cracked him wide open.
A fact that should scare the everliving fuck out of him, but he was too far down the rabbit hole to care right this second. Caught up in his fascination. Not wanting to miss a second.
Delilah gave a shuddering sigh as he slid his tongue against hers, dipping it between those cherry-ripe lips. Something about that small, needy action tipped him over the edge of his own grip on control. He speared his hands into her hair, silky smooth against his palm, a sensual slide against his skin as he cupped the back of her head. He angled her mouth so that he could plunder and persuade, drawing small moans from her. The pins holding up her hair, already mussed from their travels, came undone, and her hair tumbled down her back over his hand at the small of her back.
In a primal move he couldn’t have stopped himself from doing even if he wanted, he wrapped his fist in the locks as though binding himself to her and groaned into her mouth. He wanted to do more, take what she was offering, lay her bare to his eyes, his hands and lips, and stake a claim on each part of her. Watch her eyes turn hazy as he surged inside her, as he spilled his seed in her body.
“More.” The demand punched from him and she smiled against his lips, suddenly all siren.
