Page 4 of Radiant

He laughed, appearing in the hallway again. “She does not. Now come here.” He came toward me. “Let me show you the bedroom.” He drew me into a kiss, and I tangled my fingers in his long hair, pulled him to me in turn.

I parted my lips for him and shivered when his tongue brushed over mine. His mouth yielded and demanded, his teeth grazing my skin in an instinct he couldn’t or didn’t want to control, and the memory of his bite had my arms and legs tingling with excitement.

I pressed closer to him, and he tightened his hold on me. Solid. Auris meant stability, harbor, safety. He’d come to rescue me, had protected me during his weakest time, and now here he was, exchanging breath for breath.

I felt lightheaded and pulled back for air. “So this is why you wanted me to sleep on the train,” I whispered in his ear.

“Mmm. This is just me making sure you are properly spent and tired out and can sleep off the time difference once you are under the covers. If you want that, Ethan.”

He added the last after a pause that had me sobering some, reading meaning into it, questioning what that meaning truly was.

“I’m sorry,” I started, and then, because of jet lag or something else, I blabbered on. “These last three weeks. I… Time passed so quickly. I didn’t even think. We haven’t done anything since that day, have we? Except that once before we left. I’m sorry about that. I like you, and I am thankful⁠—”

“Ethan. Are you apologizing for not wanting to sleep with me after you were kidnapped and hurt?”

I shrugged. “I… Well, you took care of me.” I swallowed, hard. “My ex used to say I never put out.”

Auris’s eyes narrowed. “That makes me want to encounter your ex in a dark, dark alley to scare them with my heartfelt opinion. I do not expect you to spread your legs for me whenever I’m horny. There is no exchange rate for love and care. I care for you and love you. I cherish and respect you, and my desire is to accept, joyfully, only what you are willing and eager to share with me. Over the past three weeks, my sweet, you have shared your pain. I accept that. Joyfully.”

I breathed in, breathed out, and realized that this impossible, improbable reaction maybe wasn’t impossible or improbable at all. If prophecy meant anything, then perhaps it meant this.

“You accept me. All of me. Just the way I am, and the way I feel.” I giggled.

Auris’s eyebrows rose. “Yes. I may not know you perfectly yet, but, my sweet, I have learned that you giggling means you are nervous or shocked or scared. Is everything all right?”

“It’s better. You are better. I don’t know why, but you are, aren’t you?”

He sighed. “My sweet, you have been awake too long.”

I shook my head, then kissed his chin. “Nope. I had a light bulb moment. I’m really, really happy. Head-in-the-clouds happy.”

“Head in the clouds where the air is too thin?”

“Pretty much.” I kissed his chin again. “You wanted to show me the bedroom.”

He nodded. “Right this way, my sweet.”

His candied voice teased goose bumps from my skin, and his tongue on my throat made me shiver. Auris pulled me with him to the bedroom, which wasn’t where he’d left the luggage. We ambled through the apartment, past tongue-in-cheek comic art framed in gold and a wall decked out with a tapestry of mirrors, each no larger than a saucer, all gold framed.

I lost most of my clothes on the way there and got out of the rest of them before he lowered me onto the bed. Auris, too, was no longer wearing black. All the black, it seemed, had seeped from him into the walls, the headboard, the silky rug against the parquet floor where he dropped his pants.

The milky golden duvet surprised me, or would have if the pale marble fireplace hadn’t made me huff out a burst of laughter.

Auris lifted his head from my neck and followed my line of sight, his eyes shimmering in the honey light of the afternoon. “You want me to light it for you now?”

“No. If you do your meditative fire lighting now, I really will fall asleep. Take care of me first.”

“Your wish, my command.” He offered me another kiss. “I want you, Ethan. Oh, how I want you.”

Before I could respond, he smothered the words with his lips on mine all over again, pushing me against the soft duvet, his exploring touches now shifting to desire. He knew exactly where to caress and tease me, how to stroke me so I would arch against his waiting body, how to make me tremble and want him close, closer.

I gasped. “I want more, I want to feel you.”

“Yes.”

He leaned in to run his tongue over my collarbones. When I shivered, he looked at me, held my face in his hands, and brushed his thumb along my jaw before kissing me again. This was not just a kiss of desire, although it had the flavor of desire. This was a kiss of love and promise. I wanted it to last, and last forever.

When our lips parted, I said, “I love you.”