The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,25

figuring it out together. Astor spread his legs, and I walked between them. His arms came around me.

“Bianca,” he finally said, his forehead pressing down on my shoulder. I held him close and tried to breathe. My heart raced like I’d been running. If I perished in this moment, it might be an okay way to go. I’d just been kissed…and kissed. The holy ones frowned on this, and I didn’t care, not a hoot, for their opinion. This was as sacred as anything I’d ever done. “How did you exist in the universe and I not know you?”

I smiled against his chest. “I could ask you the same question. This place? It’s not somewhere I even knew existed.”

He stared down at me. “Did you leave someone behind? A man that you belonged to?”

“No.” I stroked my hand over his heart, feeling the strong, steady beat. His was made correctly. “If I had someone like that, I wouldn’t be kissing you. I’m loyal. And I am not sought after where I’m from. There are things about me that are considered…less than desirable.”

He raised a finger and traced my lip. Had it trembled? Could he see? What did he imagine when he looked at my face? He’d called me beautiful, desirable, but was that all he saw? Did he understand what I was trying to say, that we were both hurt because we were odd, different? I saw the damage in him and met it with my own experience. I understood.

“Where you are from seems a profoundly uninformed place,” he murmured, staring at his finger and its agonizing trek across my mouth. “For I find you infinitely desirable. Problematically so.”

I had the wildest want to stretch my tongue out and taste the pad of his finger. Just entertaining the thought sent flurries of heat down the core of me and machine-gun stutters in my pulse. I parted my lips, letting him feel the heat of my breath and the quiver I could not contain. “Problematic? Because of Torrin?”

His brows dipped together and then flared. He smiled. “Oh, definitely not.”

“But isn’t he all those things you described, a man who likes to claim things and go to war and hurt others? Would he hurt you if he saw us like this?”

“He could try.”

“Astor, he’s—” I’d been about to say Torrin was bigger, more temperamental, more capable of cruelty. But the insecurity was gone from Astor’s face and voice, and I didn’t want it back. What I wanted, honestly, was more kisses. More touches. More him. “—your king. Or chief. Or whatever.”

“Well, of course he is, which is why he wants the happiness and security of his people more than anything. Especially the people he loves, and although we might annoy each other constantly, he does love me. He would not fly into a rage because I kissed you. Is that really what you fear?”

I sucked my bottom lip in between my teeth, pulling it away from his touch. And here I had been congratulating myself on seeing through all his layers to the damage beneath. But I had forgotten that he was also perceptive. And that he had listened to me. Who even did that?

“Because I believe that you fear the way your body reacts to my touch. You fear the way you feel, the way you want. This is what is problematic for me, Bianca.”

“You’re right. About all of it. I want a lot right now at this moment, but I can’t stop thinking. The thing that makes me undesirable is this stupid, broken body. I mean, yes, my body lights up like a sunrise when you kiss me—even when you touch my face. But also, my heart can’t endure it. And I don’t mean that metaphorically…err, like a figure of speech? I mean it literally. My heart is weak. Astor. I can’t even…even…run a track without—” I was panting now, and dark edges were closing in my peripheral vision. Don’t get yourself worked up, Bianca. You’re letting it happen. Get control. Don’t do this to yourself. Calm down. I could almost hear my brother’s voice.

Which of course was the last thing in the universe I wanted to hear right now.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to steady. It was easier said than done. “I’m messing this up. Let me explain.” I cleared my throat as a means of covering that I was out of breath. “I was born with a heart defect. Where I am from, babies born