Chapter 23
Later, they sat side by side on Flynn’s big bed, backs against the headboard, silently passing Alexander Grant’s bottle of whiskey back and forth between them.
Flynn still felt weary in his bones. He should make her go away, he thought. Make her go to her own bed. Make her do something that wasn’t here, with him, because she ripped open too many doors inside him, and as long as he could feel her skin, her scent filling his nose, they’d never close again.
He needed them closed.
But she was so warm, so strong. Touching her felt so good.
Shifters needed touch, but Flynn shied away from it. The most he got was when he and Tank sat this way sometimes, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a bottle.
Or the occasional touch from his crew—a hug or a rub against his face, when one of them was feeling especially emotional.
Flynn had always discouraged too much mushy shit—it made him feel weak and uncertain. But deep down, he knew his cat craved touch. It craved warmth, and someone to curl up with when he slept. His bed was so fucking cold and empty.
Who the hell was he kidding? He wanted Kira to stay. In his bed, in his home, in his crew. Right now he could feel her breathing, hear her heart beating, slow and soothing.
She took a drink of whiskey and tipped her head back. “I remember you, you know,” she said. “From our pledging ceremony.” She added, unexpectedly, “You were kind to me.”
Flynn snorted. “I barely remember it, but I’m sure I wasn’t.” He couldn’t look at her, though, because he did remember. He just didn’t want to. Especially now, with the wound over Markus so raw.
He added in a softer voice, “We weren’t trained to be kind.”
“You were, though,” she said. Her voice grew dreamy. “I remember walking up the aisle in the Great Hall. All those people.”
He remembered the Great Hall of her father’s castle, a cavernous stone room with a domed ceiling. The entire fucking House of Al-Maddeiri lining both sides of the room. Draken in their human forms, rows and rows of them, tall and beautiful and intimidating, and the Elite Lion Guard, faces hard and stern.
At the front of the room, on a raised dais, sat the royal family. Kira’s father, the most intimidating of all. Her mother, young and almost impossibly beautiful to Flynn’s eyes, holding Kira’s baby sister Mayah her arms. The prince, Emon, three years old, was wriggling impatiently and pulling at the collar of his formal suit.
“I was so excited,” Kira said, taking a sip of whiskey. “Everything was so beautiful. I thought the carpet looked like stars.”
Flynn felt himself softening, just a tiny bit. He took the bottle from her and took a mouthful, leaning his head back against the headboard. “It did. It was embroidered with jewels in the shapes of all the constellations of the night sky in Al-Maddeiri. Diamonds on black velvet.”
His eyes were closed, but he still felt her smile. “You do remember.”
He remembered. Something inside him that he hadn’t realized was knotted up released itself. She wanted him to remember.
He said, “You were wearing a dress the color of fire, with a zillion petticoats underneath to make it full. They made these little points, all different lengths, and all different shades of yellow and red and orange. So when you twirled around, they looked like flames dancing.”
She giggled. He’d never heard her giggle before, like the little girl they were remembering. It was an unexpectedly sweet sound, like bells.
“I loved that dress,” she said. “I thought I looked like a creature in a story, like a living flame. I felt so beautiful, and so grown-up. Five years old!”
“Ancient,” he agreed.
She nudged him with her shoulder, and took the bottle back from him. He heard the slosh of whiskey as she tilted it to drink.
“My tutor escorted me from my apartments to the back of the room and told me I had to walk solemnly down the aisle. But I felt so pretty, and there was music playing, and so I started dancing down the aisle instead.”
“You did look like a flame creature,” Flynn said. “Your skirt rippling with the music. I remember you looked so…happy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Until my Aunt Thekla hissed at me from the sidelines that I was shaming the family, and to walk properly. I looked up and saw all those people watching me, and I froze.”
Flynn laughed. “Was that what happened? I thought maybe you just got scared.”
“I did. I suddenly felt ashamed of myself, and everyone was staring at me with those carved-out-of-rock expressions draken can get. I was terrified.” She moved closer to him. She was so warm, like the desert sun in the morning. “And then you looked down that long, long, aisle, and you smiled at me.”
“I wasn’t supposed to. But you were so fucking cute. Like a tasra flower.” Tasras had once grown in the Al-Maddeiri gardens. Bright orange, with waxy outer leaves and feathery inner ones that ruffled in the breeze and looked like fire.
And he’d felt sorry for her. Protective. He didn’t want her to be scared.
She said, “You smiled, and I wanted you to be proud of me because you were kind, and so I walked like a proper little princess all the rest of the way down the aisle.”
“You did. Very proper.” Her warmth was seeping into him, making him feel warm. Soft.
“And then I got to the end and stood next to you, and you took my hand. Like this.” She slipped her hand into his.
She was a grown woman, now, her hand hard and strong like the warrior she was. But he suddenly could feel that soft, trusting, five-year-old hand in his. He closed his hand around hers.
“I liked you,” he said quietly. “You had spunk. And heart. And you were…joyful. Full of life.”
She ran her fingers over his palm, sending warmth up his arm. “You still have calluses on your palms,” she said. “Still practicing with a sword?”
He gave a huff of laughter. “More like building houses with a hammer.”
She twined her fingers with his. “Maybe that’s a better way to spend your life. Building, instead of fighting and destroying.”
“Maybe,” he said. Her hair was curling as it dried. He loved the scent of it. “But I was raised to be a warrior. Sometimes I think I’ll never be anything else, no matter how hard I try.”
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “You’re a lot of things, Flynn. All of them good.”
He shook his head. “Fuck, no. Half of them, maybe. On a good day.”
“Sixty percent.”
“I’ll take it.”
Her hand tightened around his. “They didn’t break you, Flynn,” she said softly. “They never will.”
Ah, fuck. He took the bottle from her hand and set it on the nightstand, pulling her gently around to face him.
His lips slid over hers, as gently as that boy had taken her hand all those years ago, until they found a place where they fit perfectly. His hand slid around the back of her neck, stroking the skin, his thumb moving against the hollow of her throat.
The fire that had been damped down for so long rose up in her, warm and sweet. She felt a hint of the happy abandon that little girl had felt, that had been snuffed out by tragedy and duty and long years of waiting, alone with a guardian who had very little warmth in him.
But Flynn had a fire to match hers. She had no idea how he’d ever survived the training in the Lion Guard—the harshness, the regimentation, the cold lack of feeling.
His kiss was deep with soul, and pent-up longing for things he never thought he’d have. She could feel it in the way he tasted her, savoring her as though she were something rare and precious. Long, slow kisses that turned her insides into molten honey, that made her want to die right now because nothing could ever feel this good again.
She pressed against him, wanting to feel all of his warmth, all those hard planes and angles that somehow matched perfectly with her softer curves. She could feel him getting hard, his thick shaft pressing against her core.
He wanted her. As much as she wanted him.
He broke the kiss, still stroking the back of her neck, and leaned his forehead against hers. Slowly, slowly, he skimmed his fingers up her bare arm. Goosebumps rose on her skin. He smiled, watching her react to him, and circled his fingers lightly on the point of her shoulder, then down her collarbone to the curve of her breast.
“The flame’s still there,” he murmured, pressing his fingers to the spot over her heart. “Here.”
The flames were raging in her like a forest fire. She wanted to feel his lips on her skin, to strip her soul naked and give him everything she had, everything she was. The intensity of it terrified her.
Flynn tilted his head, kissing down the side of her neck, running his tongue along her collarbone. Just that small touch made her weak.
She ran her hands over his rippling back muscles, down to his tapered waist and the curve of his butt. His skin was soft—velvet over steel—and knotted with old scars.
She wanted to learn them all, follow the map of his life and discover where he’d been. The gap between the boy who’d held her hand and the dark, brooding man who held her now seemed both impossibly wide, and almost nonexistent.
His alpha power rolled through her, its magic singing in her bones. Not terrifying now—not demanding, or pushing, or forcing.
Like the desert under her feet, like the sun-warmed stone courtyard of her family’s castle had once felt. Solid, never changing, always there to support her.
The way her family couldn’t be. The way no one had ever been.
Markus had watched over her, cared for her. But she had been a duty to him, preserved for one purpose, one destiny.
She wanted more than that. She wanted this.
She curved her arms around Flynn’s neck and brought his lips to hers once more.