Fragile Eternity (Wicked Lovely 3)

“So how?” she prompted.

“Just sunlight. Like what you’ve done for me, but more. It’ll heal almost as slowly as if you were…” His voice faded at the word.

“Mortal. It’s okay to say it. I know what I am, Keenan.” She realized they were still holding hands and squeezed his again. “If I were mortal, I’d be dead right now.”

“If you were mortal, she wouldn’t have struck you.”

“I’m not so sure. If you cared about the Summer Girls like…this, would she have hurt them?” Aislinn hadn’t thought Donia so cruel, but as she lay in Keenan’s bed with four icy cuts in her, it was hard to hold on to that belief.

At first, Keenan didn’t answer. Instead he stared beyond her at the Cup of Gold vine that was twined around the posts of the bed. Blossoms opened up, revealing deep purple star-lines, and tendrils stretched toward him.

“Keenan?” she prompted.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though. Not right now.”

“What does matter?”

“That she struck my queen.” Something new shimmered in the depths of his eyes: swords wavered and flashed.

Perhaps it should frighten her, that glimpse of rage in her king’s eyes, but it comforted her. The other emotions she thought she also saw there, the possessiveness and fear and longing, those were the frightening ones. “But you came for me. I’ll heal.”

He pulled his hand away from hers, tentative now. “Can I make you well?”

“Yes.” She didn’t ask what he needed to do; that would be a type of doubt, and right now neither of them wanted that doubt in the room. They were friends. They were partners. They could figure the rest out. They had to.

He is why I’m alive right now.

The ice inside would have kept her wound from healing if he hadn’t removed it. In time, the loss of blood would’ve killed her.

Keenan folded back the heavy comforter, taking the decadently soft sheet with it.

She was injured, but still, she felt the awkward tension building. She had an uneasy suspicion that the discomfort wasn’t going to be one of pain, but of pleasure.

“Can you lift up your shirt? I need to see the cuts.” His voice was shaky, either from fear or something she didn’t want to think about.

The door to the rest of the loft was open. They didn’t have closed-door privacy, but no one would come near the room with them in it. Their court would accept their not-dating if they continued this way, but it wasn’t the preference. That was no secret.

Silently, she lifted the edge of her shirt so her stomach was laid bare to him. White gauze covered the place where the cuts were. “This too?”

He nodded, but he didn’t offer to help. He had his hands clasped together, and he refused to look directly at her.

She peeled back the tape and bandage. Dark plum bruises surrounded the red centers of four cuts. They weren’t much more than an inch wide, but they went deep into her. Donia had widened and extended the ice on her fingertips as she drove it into Aislinn’s skin.

“This won’t hurt,” Keenan murmured, “but I suspect it’ll be…uncomfortable in another way.”

She blushed brighter this time. “I trust you.”

Without another word he pressed his palm over the frostbitten cuts. The touch of his skin to hers was electric. In his eyes, waves crashed against a deserted beach under a perfect sunrise.

She felt the jolt of pleasure and drew her breath in sharply.

He didn’t look away as the sunlight soaked into her body through those tiny incisions; he held her gaze and told her, “You healed Beira’s frost with a kiss. I could heal you faster that way, but I can’t…not like this. I want to, Ash. I want to use the excuse to kiss you here”—he glanced at her bare stomach—“I want to take this trust you’re giving me right now and use it to get lost in each other, but I can’t. Not with you being mine-but-not-mine. Healing this way is slower, but better. For you and…everyone.”

“That’s probably wise.” She took a shaky breath. Her heart was beating out a dangerous rhythm; tiny bits of bliss surged through her entire body as the sunlight melted away whatever cold had lingered. And all the while, he watched her with awe in his eyes. It was a look she usually ran from, but in that moment, there was nowhere to run.

Look away. She couldn’t. All she could do was stare at him.

The sunlight grew stronger. She gripped his wrist and shivered, not with cold but with bliss at the electricity zinging in her skin and bones. There was no way to deny that it was sexual. The only touch was his hand on her bare stomach, but it was almost as sexual as what she shared with Seth.