Chapter 19: Nothing Owed

Cade's rooms were on the top floor of the lodge, at the end of a hall nobody used.

I had never been inside them.

The bedroom was plain: a big bed, a desk covered in maps, a window full of stars.

"You should be sleeping," Cade said from the door.

"I've slept enough."

"Lara."

"The petition is for tomorrow noon. Nothing in this room can change it tonight."

I sat on the edge of his bed and held out my left hand.

The inside of my wrist was smooth.

"There's nothing pulling me here," I said. "Not the moon, not a mark. I want you to know that."

"I know it."

"I'm saying it anyway. I'm here because I want to be, and I owe you nothing."

He crossed the room slowly.

He knelt in front of me and took my wrist in both hands, the way he had the first time.

He kissed the place where the crescent had been.

Nothing flared. His mouth was warm and the skin was only skin.

"Thank God," he said against it.

I started to laugh and stopped when he looked up.

His eyes were dark and wide open.

"Lara. I've been afraid of this for a month."

"Of what?"

"That you'd come into this room and be thinking of him."

"I'm thinking of you," I said. "Take my sweater off."

He did.

His hands were slower than the night before. He shaped them over my ribs and then my breasts, and I tipped my head back and let him.

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