my soul.” He tilts my face to his and touches the tip of his nose to mine. “It had sunk its teeth into my heart, but when you appeared, you reminded me that there are parts of me I am not willing to surrender.”
I smile, my eyes stinging. “So I saved you from a monster?”
“Not for the first time.” He lays his forehead on mine.
“And now you have returned the favor,” I say, breathless, unable to stop my fingers from slipping down the warm skin of his throat, from burrowing under the collar of his tunic. My thumb traces the silver scar beneath his collarbone, and he shivers.
His lips flutter against mine as he speaks, filling me with the most powerful kind of craving. “No, I haven’t,” he whispers. “The things I owe you can never be repaid.”
His lips press to mine, soft and searching, and I close my eyes and welcome him. My heart is beating so fast that I can barely breathe, and all of me is tingling. His tongue traces a delicate path along my bottom lip, and I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull him closer. He may have been a perfect hero in my dreams, but that perfect hero did not taste like this. He was not warm and trembling like this. He had no weight, no force. But this Melik, the one made of flesh and faults, has all of that, and my body recognizes the difference. It revels in that difference.
He deepens our kiss, his whiskers scratching at my face, one hand sliding down my back to my waist, the other cradling my head above the hard rumbles of the carriage. Parts of me are soft and hot, but others are taut and frantic. I am a jumble of mismatched pieces, but somehow all of them have the same goal. Bring him closer.
I remove my hand from the neck of his tunic to slide it over the bumps of his ribs and curves of his muscles. Such liberties, so bold, but I can think of nothing more necessary than this. Melik moans, a low, desperate sound, and turns so his body is half on top of mine. He crushes me to the floor and I feel the vibrations of the wheels and the hum of the engine against my spine. Suddenly I understand why people slide into this kind of temptation, how the power of a moment conquers years of caution. My hand slips under the hem of his tunic. My palm meets the smooth skin of his waist. And when it does, he breaks our kiss to taste more of me, the soft skin under my chin, and oh, just above the neckline of my dress. His hand is fisted in the folds of my skirt, pressed against my hip. I want to arch into him and see if he’ll pull, if he’ll touch my legs, if he’ll—
The carriage bounces as it hits a divot in the road, and the engine roars. Melik is tossed away from me, against the back of the man next to him, but he catches the edges of the blanket and holds it close around us. His breath is heavy and hot in my ear as he says, “I’m sorry.”
He settles next to me, preserving even the tiny distance between us, the one I want to erase. I frown. “Why?”
He strokes my cheek. “Because this should not happen in the back of a crowded carriage under a blanket that smells like horse.”
I lay my head on his shoulder. “Where should it happen, then?” I whisper, my cheeks heating as I realize how brazen I sound.
He holds my head against his body and wraps his arm around my back again. My hand rests over his heart. “Should it happen at all?” he murmurs. “Is that what you want?”
I bite my lip as my thoughts whirl. What am I asking for? I have only the haziest idea, one that involves a good deal more than the ways our bodies could entwine. It seems so foolish, given that we are caught in the middle of a war, that Melik is marked for death—possibly by both sides in this conflict—and that I am without home or family or means or future. And I don’t know what he is thinking at all. Perhaps his thoughts are purely about kissing, about touching, about tasting. Because he is Noor, he might tell me if I asked him, but because