Page 95 of Darkness Defined

He let out a faint sigh, and his lips pressed back against mine. The pure intimacy of the moment shattered every romantic notion I’d ever had. This was everything our first kiss should have been. I rubbed a thumb over his bottom lip. “You have a fantastic mouth by the way.” I felt him smile against my finger and kissed him again. There was a lingering heat that felt like it was clearly being held in check. I thought about his eyes the night before and what that apparently meant.

I wonder if I could make him do that on purpose.

I pulled back slightly to get a better look at him. They were still decidedly blue, albeit a bit dazed. “Also, you smell like sage.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You once told me I smell like lavender. I thought you might like to know what you smell like.”

“Oh. Is that okay?” He frowned.

I leaned forward until my nose brushed the sensitive skin beneath his ear, then inhaled deeply, appreciating the pure scent that was Matt. “I like it,” I whispered before leaning back again.

It took a moment for me to shake off my fog. When I opened my eyes, I was rewarded with two perfectly midnight ones looking back at me. My lips twitched. I’d never been the seducer before and already I could tell I liked it immensely. I stole a more chaste kiss.

He blinked, and the blue returned.

“Now, are you going to show me what you found in the library or not?”

He blinked a few more times, then glanced around like he was trying to regain his bearings. “What? Right. The library.” Without standing, he used shadow to bring his bag over.

I shook my head. He really was impossible, but he hadn’t run away yet, so we were already off to a better start. When he pulled out a dusty tome and a handful of papers, I stared in shock. The book looked older than the university.

“Here,” he said, passing it to me. “Almost all of it’s in Latin, but there’s a special lamp in the library we can use to translate.”

What he was saying didn’t make a bit of sense. I accepted the book, terrified it would crumble in my hands. “Where did you get this?”

“It was in the restricted section.”

I looked up at him sharply.

He shrugged as if it was nothing. “The librarian showed me.”

I didn’t know what was more surprising, that the librarian, who never said a word to anyone, had helped him or that she’d let him take the book out of the library. “Matt, the restricted section is spelled. How did you get in?”

His brow furrowed. “What kind of spell?”

“It’s an avoidance spell that makes you face all of your greatest fears.” His eyebrows shot up. I’d only heard about it, but it was apparently pretty potent stuff. You had to get special permission and everything. No one simply walked into the restricted section.

Matt gulped. “No wonder I almost didn’t make it.”

I carefully opened the ancient book. “How did you?”

“I wanted to get it for you.”

I glanced at him. “Beg your pardon?”

“I asked the librarian where I could find what we were missing and she took me there. Pointed it right out. Here, look at this.” He reached over and began turning the pages.

I thought about telling him to be careful, but I was too busy staring at him in disbelief. He’d faced down his greatest fears, just to get me a book?

He stopped fussing with the pages and started riffling through the crumpled notes in his backpack. “That book, plus this, gives us our knight.” He pushed a piece of paper at me. “This goes way deeper than we ever thought. I think your romance might actually be a forbidden affair.”

I finally looked at what he was showing me. In the miraculously whole book was a page with a family crest and a name. I recognized the staff encircled with shadowed flames from my book. On the handwritten sheet Matt had given me were reference notes to yet another book, only this one was a Shadow Demonology.

He pointed at the page. Beside two names was the symbol once again. “Meet your knight—Matthias Warde of the Order of Light.”

I gasped and nearly dropped the relic. “Mother of Night, Matt. I could kiss you.”