Chapter 20: My Kitchen, My Luna

Ronan did not open the envelope that night.

He set it on the mantel of his room, unopened, and stood looking at it with his back to me.

"Tomorrow," he said. "At her stone. With you."

"Tomorrow," I said.

He turned, and the grief on his face was a different thing from the fear I had seen for a week.

It was only sorrow, plain and clean.

I held out my hand.

He came to me, and then he did not take me to the bed.

He took me down the back stairs, through the dark hall, to the kitchen.

The ovens were banked for the night and the room smelled of warm bread.

"Here?" I said.

"You walked out of my arms on that counter once," he said. "I'd like to finish."

"You walked out."

"I'm aware, Hazel."

"I told you at the time it was your rule."

"I know." He caught my wrist and brought it to his mouth. "I'm breaking it."

I laughed, and he kissed me before the laugh was finished.

He lifted me onto the steel counter, the same one, and pushed my nightdress up my thighs.

The metal was cold.

I gasped, and he swallowed the sound.

"I thought about this for a week," he said against my ear. "Every time you reached for a pan, I thought about this."

"You never said."

"I said it to Garth. He told me to go lie down."

He kissed down my throat, over the mark, and I shivered.

It was still tender, and when his mouth touched it a bright line of pleasure ran straight down to my stomach.

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