When Ward said he had spare rooms, he apparently couldn’t count because he only had one. It was tight, cramped, and astonishingly clean, but there was just a single bed. The three of them stood in the narrow doorway, and Jin was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of how Flick’s heartbeat quickened.
Matteo heard it too and glanced sidelong at Jin before taking several steps back. “The room’s yours. Fortunately for you two, I don’t get cold.”
He sauntered down the dark corridor toward the bustling floor without another word, leaving Jin and Flick alone. She smoothed down her trousers with her hands, saying nothing.
Jin didn’t get cold either. Nor did he need sleep. He gestured in the direction of the revelry. “I’ll—”
“Stay,” Flick whispered. A quick volley of the word as if part of her wanted to hold it back, but the rest of her could not.
He held himself still. This was the perfect moment to tease her, to remind her that sharing a bed with a boy in a tavern was positively unladylike, but he could manage no such raillery. She was a marvel in the moonlight, and when she looked at him with those eyes of sunflowers and sunshine, of warmth in a world that gave so little, Jin could not say no.
He closed the door. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to.
“Vampires don’t need sleep,” he said.
“I know. Needing and wanting are two different things,” she replied, and it was such a leap from the Felicity Linden he’d stolen away from her mother’s estate that he couldn’t help himself.
He inched forward. “Oh? And what is it that Felicity Linden wants?”
He was not expecting her to mimic him. To close the distance between them. He instinctively took a step back, his head thudding into the worn wooden door.
“She wants to be called Flick,” she said, a dark undercurrent to her tone. There was a spark in her eyes he’d never seen before. Dangerous, thrilling. He felt the heat of her exhales, smelled the sugarplums she’d eaten.
“What else does she want?” he breathed.
Flick glanced at his mouth, then into his eyes for an eternal moment until something softened in hers. “She wants to kiss away your sorrows. To pluck each one from your heart and fill it with sweet happiness instead.”
Jin stared at her. As if summoned by her words, hefelteach of those sorrows, like stones weighing him down, drowning him beneath Ettenia’s dusky waves. The tumultuous loss of his parents. Arthie giving herself up just after they had mended their broken bond. A soul as gentle as Matteo forced to become the Wolf of White Roaring. The damage the Ram had dealt to Flick’s arms.
She threaded her fingers through his with a wince she tried and failed to hide, then tugged him ever so gently toward her until their brows touched.
“I want every part of you here with me, present,bare,” Flick whispered, and then her gaze swept downward with a tiny, anxious giggle. “Not that kind of bare. Not that I don’t want you to be bare—oh, goodness, I didn’t mean—I want—”
He kissed her quiet. She gasped against his mouth, tightening her fingers around his, tilting her head and deepening the kiss with a hitch of her breath, her curls brushing his brow as soft as her words. He could feel her heartbeat, racing faster than a bullet out of a barrel, the pitter-patter rising until it was as loud as the tavern din.
She pulled away, cheeks flushed, and then she turned to the bed, still holding his hands but too shy to voice her words.
He followed her. Sat down when she released him. The bed was more of a cot, really, barely enough for a single person, let alone two. It dipped beneath her weight, rocking as she shimmied back and made herself comfortable.
It took an excruciating moment before he could turn and face her. She was waiting, tilting her head so the moonlight caught one side of her face, her white shirt framing that vee of skin, sleeves folded to her forearms, bandages wrapped just above her wrists, those infernal trousers teasing him. She was leaning against the plain headboard, a pillow propped behind her back.
When she patted the space beside her, Jin could only oblige, unsure of how she wanted him. He started to lie down, but this was a new Flick, one who knew what she wanted. She pulled his head into her lap, and Jin felt the warmth of her skin through the soft fabric of her trousers. Matteo had lied, for vampires did get cold. Achingly so.
“Are you snug?” she asked.
Snug.Jin almost laughed. It was an odd question, but Flick was no ordinary girl, and this was no ordinary moment.
“Areyou?” he asked.
She nodded with a sweet smile, staring into his eyes. He knew what she was searching for: to see if he was present. To see if he was trying to distract himself withherpresence.
And she was pleased with what she found.
She traced the lines of his face with a gentle, barely there touch. His breath shuddered, surprising him, and he heard her lips curve into another smile before her fingers moved to his hair, running through the strands, nails scraping his scalp until Jin drifted off to sleep.
44ARTHIE
Arthie tracked the passage of time by the way Laith dozed in and out of sleep in his chair. He barely seemed to notice her, or the black-clad man sitting in the chair and watching them with a stake in hand, slipping into a state of delirium every time he jolted awake before nodding off again. Arthie pretended the same, letting her head loll and hang until the man eventually grunted, drew out his pocket watch, and left, the lock turning behind him.
