His gaze lifted, colliding with mine again. “Your years in the swamp. How alone you must have been, how afraid. Then I think about how, in the end, that experience made you what you are. And that makes me lose my breath, sometimes. Knowing you didn’t fall apart under pressure. That instead, you crystallized. I think that’s half of why you’re so beautiful to me—because you looked desertion in the face and answered it with loyalty. And sometimes, I wonder what it would take to earn that devotion for myself. What it would feel like to belong to someone who’s capable of believing in me that much.”
I searched for my voice and finally found it wedged somewhere between my lungs and my stomach. “But you don’t need me to believe in you. Not when you already believe in yourself.”
“Oh, but I want both.” He grinned. “That’s something youdoknow. I’m unforgivably selfish, and I want everything. All of it. Every last thing I can get my hands on.”
I chuckled, but when his smile faded, so did my laugh.
“The truth is,” he said, “I’ve spent so much time rebuilding myself that I’ve never taken the time to build something with someone else. I’ve never even stayed in one place long enough to try. But being married to you, it’s... I don’t know. Made me wonder if being a husband might be something I have a talent for.”
The sentiment strummed an aching chord within me. “Among your many other talents, of course.”
That earned me a smirk. “Yes, well. I’m glad you’ve finally come to terms with how impressive I am.”
“I didn’t saythat.”
“You implied it. Which is nearly the same thing.”
The walls heaved, threatening to collapse on us, but I immersed myself in his reassuring scent. “I think about you, too, you know. Way more often than makes sense.”
His thumb skimmed along the underside of my jaw. “I should hope so,” he murmured. “I’d hate to be all alone in this preoccupation of mine.”
I tried to smile, but the gesture never made it to my face, because he stared at me with such liquid intensity that the world spun away. He could have called me by any name he’d wanted just then, and I would’ve answered, because I had never felt so...wedded to anyone. Not in the legal sense, but like he’d stitched some offered-up part of me to an equivalent one of him. Like this moment had finally carved away the bullshit and misunderstandings and let us stand before one another, bare-faced and without pretense.
The ghost of a warning solidified in my mind. Fuck,wasI going to fall in love with him?
It certainly felt like it, just then. Something was coming, heavy and inevitable, and any attempt to fight it would amount to nothing more than me shouting protestations at an approaching dawn.
At the thought, my equanimity frayed. My arms jerked, my fingers clawing as I buckled beneath the nightmare’s influence. A wheezing breath leaked from my throat.
Ky didn’t blink. “Not yet.” He slid his hands up and laced our fingers together. He flattened himself atop me, locking us into an age-old position that was nothing short of carnal.
Gods, he was all muscle. A slab of carven stone.
Lust flared, hot and insistent, edging out the storm’s foothold. I tilted my splayed hips upward, pressing into him, unable to help myself.
He shut his eyes and laughed softly. “Gods above. You’re more difficult to resist than this nightmare, do you know that?”
“I should hope so,” I teased, with my best attempt at a Hightower lilt.
He laughed again and ran his nose down the side of my throat, inhaling deep.
The storm shouted into the echo chamber of my mind.You are nothing. Trash.Worthless.
Liar, I railed back. And, to my amazement, some part of me believed it. Because wasn’t this moment, this prince, this husband of mine, who trembled with yearning as he pressed his face to my neck, tangible proof?
I mattered. I’d made a mark on the world just by existing. Peoplecaredfor me. Maybe I hadn’t done the greatest job of caring about myself, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t capable. Maybe I just had to decide. Like this man had.
The possibility hung in my mind, a teardrop poised to fall.
“Ky,” I whispered.
“Harlowe.” He spoke raggedly against my neck. His fingers clamped mine tighter, as if he could transmute his strength into me, palm to palm, straight through my skin.
“I have something to tell you,” I said.
“What?” His breath was like a heated forge against my skin.
“I think...I’m glad I married you. I think I don’t regret it.”
