Chapter 9: The First Night

Lucan's POV

I shut the door of my rooms behind her and heard the lock turn under my own hand.

I did not remember choosing to do it.

She stood in the middle of my floor in the green dress, with the firelight on her bare shoulders.

She was waiting for me to speak.

"You said you were not going to ask," I said. My voice was not steady.

"I know what I said."

"I put it in writing. I have kept to it for six nights."

"Lucan."

"Say it again."

She lifted her chin.

"I'm asking," Keira said. "I want you to touch me. I want all of it."

"Don't make me say it a third time."

Something in me that had been chained for eighteen years broke loose.

I crossed the room in two strides and took her face in both my hands.

She was small in them. Her pulse raced under my thumbs, and her eyes were wide and certain.

"You want this," I said.

"Kiss me."

I kissed her.

It was not gentle. I had meant it to be, and I had lost that argument before my mouth reached hers.

She made a small sound against my lips. Her hands closed in my shirt.

She kissed me back with all the stubbornness that had walked her into the sea.

I backed her against the bedpost.

She gasped when her shoulder blades met the wood, and I felt it in my chest.

"Keira," I said, against her mouth, and pressed her harder into the wood.

"If you stop, I'll hurt you."

I laughed. I could not help it.

Her fingers went to my shirt and tore half the buttons off.

The sound she made when she touched my bare chest went straight through me.

"Turn around," I said.

She turned. I found the laces at her back and undid them one at a time.

Every inch of skin I uncovered, I put my mouth on.

The nape of her neck. The point of her shoulder. The long line of her spine.

She shook under my lips.

The green dress fell to the floor.

She stood in front of me in nothing at all, thin and pale and perfect, and I had pictured it for six nights.

I had not come close.

There was an old scar across her ribs. I put my mouth on it, and her breath caught.

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