My brows crumple. “What?”
“I was hoping I could kiss you.”
I was hoping Icould kiss you.
“Oh,” I whisper, dipping my head. Heat moves through my body like a scalding liquid, fanning against my cheeks. There’s something so exposing about the fact that he can see me, but I can’t see him.
“Just…this once?”
My brows draw together in bemusement.Just once?
“I know you don’t exactly have many choices, but…it doesn’t seem to make me want to any less.”
“I…” I only said that because I didn’t want him to know about the daemon and now…now he knows. He knows and hestillwants to kiss me. Even after I…butjust once…
“Or you can tell me to fuck off if you’d rather.”
“No, I want you to,” I say quickly, licking at my lips. I go very still, body tensing as he wraps a warm hand around my neck, thumb smoothing up my throat. His nose grazes mine, a feather-light touch of his lips. I careen forward slightly to find the air cold and empty.
“But first--" I exhale sharply and he laughs. “I thought we could make another agreement. I have amends I would like to make,” he says voice dropping as his proximity grows closer. “I think the last time wasn’t really worthy of being your first kiss. So, I was hoping we could agree that this one is the real first.”
“What about the one before that?”
His lips graze my ear. “Another man definitely doesn’t get to claim your first kiss, Pandora,” he growls.
Thatone had completely slipped my mind. “No, I was talking about the one before that,” I correct.
“Did you kiss someone before that?” he questions.
I laugh. “I’m talking about the one before that withyou. The one you stole.”
He grunts out a discontented noise, apparently having scrubbed that one from his mind completely. “That one is definitely not worthy.”
“I’m not really sure it works like that,” I murmur.
He turns his head, lips grazing across my temple as his breaths caress my face. “Humor me?”
“Okay,” I clip out only because my heart is thundering in my chest with anticipation. His palm sweeps further up my neck, tilting my jaw up to meet him as I feel him inch closer, ever closer. Shivers sprout across my skin. I feel vulnerable with the lack of sight. Suspicions hackling, I suddenly yank my head back. “Wait—you’re not going to like press a toad to my mouth or something, are you?”
He barks out a laugh. “Do you really think I’d do that?”
“I don’t know. I just feel…like I’m at your mercy because I can’t see.”
He laughs again. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve compared me to a toad. But…I’ve been called worse.”
He fits his lips over me before I can relinquish my grin. His own smile presses against mine, and even though I knew it was coming the breath whooshes from my chest, my heart beating harder, faster. He moves slowly, our mouths parting slightly as we take our first sips.
Not our first. But what should be our first. A kiss both of us desire and have decided on. Knowing he wants this just as much as I do, asked for it this time expands under my ribs.
I reach forward, searching until I find his jaw, admiring its structure under the tips of my fingers, trailing up to do the same with the sides of his skull. The kiss is soft, sweet yet careful.I want to be so much closer.I step forward, momentarily forgetting I’m on the ledge of a step, and start to dip. He catches me with a soft laugh against my mouth, settles me back on the step, and presses firm lips over mine once before he pulls back, nudging first the tip of his nose along mine and then his forehead. “Better?” he murmurs, hands sliding up to cradle my face.
“Mhm.”I do feel better.The daemon is so faint I can barely feel it at all. All that deep, panging sorrow inside of me lightened.
He lets out a soft chiding laugh. “I meant your eyesight.”
“Oh.” My eyes flash open to find his grin. “Yes,” I say breathlessly. “Better.”
It’s dim in the black-bricked tunnel he’s placed us in and I blink, eyes adjusting to our surroundings. The setting sun behind us lights his eyes in a warm glow. “Were you implying that was better…for a first kiss?”
