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.”
He whipped his head up. The sheer elation in his eyes bought me one last lucid moment. He opened his mouth to reply, but I never got to hear it, because the nightmare cracked my mind like an eggshell.
The darkness poured in, carrying me downward into the sooty, seething black.
24.
This time, awareness came on like a hammer strike. My head pounded.Boom.My fingers ached.Boom.
Except...that dizzying thump came from outside my skull, not within. Because someone was at my door. Banging.
Loudly.
I opened my eyes. “Ugh.”
Strong limbs tangled around me, but their laxity told me my bed companion was still asleep. I raised my head just as the door opened. A brown-haired man peeked in.
A frisson of alarm shot through me. “Merron? What’re you doing here?”
