He sucked in a breath trapped halfway between a muffled yawn and a sigh, and his eyebrows furrowed meditatively before he opened his eyes. At first hazy with sleep, his face showed dawning comprehension as he looked back at me, followed by acceptance of where he was and with whom. We lay there watching each other in silence for some time, listening to the breeze sigh through the trees, each time followed by the rustle of leaves falling.
“May I touch you?” he asked.
At that moment nothing existed beyond the clearing, beyond us, as though we drifted on a mirror-still sea with no land in sight. Soon we’d part ways. There was no harm in allowing myself this, just once. I nodded.
With a fingertip, he traced the curve of my jaw. His touch was so light I barely felt it. His hand brushed the collar of his coat pulled up around my neck, and a trickle of cool autumn air spilled into my warm cocoon. He traced all around the edge of my ear and up toward my forehead. His finger paused near my hairline.
Mortified, I realized a blemish had appeared there overnight. “Rook! Don’t touch that.”
“Why not?” he said. He lifted his finger and regarded my forehead. “It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“You aren’t supposed to poke people’s spots. It’s embarrassing. It’s—like when I was looking at your wound, I suppose.”
“Your face isn’t festering. Nor is it hideous.”
“Thank you. That’s nice.”
He frowned at my amusement. Haughtily, he said, “Something about you changes every day. Isobel, you’re very beautiful.”
I harbored no illusions about my appearance. I was neither homely nor pretty; I occupied an unremarkable spot in between. But Rook couldn’t lie. Despite his obnoxious tone, he really meant it. It wasn’t so much of a stretch to imagine that fair folk saw humans differently than we saw one another. A flutter stirred in my belly even as I determined not to make too much of it. He was the vain one, not I. And I needed to keep my head out of the clouds.
His hand had wandered to my hair, and he spread it out on the moss, combing through the strands with his fingers until it gleamed as straight and smooth as it could get. It seemed impossible that someone who had lived for hundreds of years and hunted fairy beasts for sport could find this entertaining, but his expression was transfixed. I glanced at the trees, suddenly a bit afraid of how much I was enjoying his attention. How much time had passed? Surely we couldn’t afford to linger like this. Shadowy anxieties flickered at the edges of my thoughts, some not unpleasant in the slightest, yet it surprised me how worrying about the Wild Hunt, getting home safely, and the possibility of getting attacked by more fairy beasts paled in comparison to the queasy anticipation of wondering what Rook and I might do if I allowed this to go on much longer. The whole world and its myriad possibilities shrank down to the tingling caress of his fingertips every time they brushed my scalp: all its beauty, and all its terror. Did other girls feel like this the first time they let a boy touch them? And not that I was humiliated by it, but—even at the age of seventeen?
His knuckles skimmed the nape of my neck. Well, that decided it.
“We should get moving,” I declared, sitting up. The crisp outside air came as a shock as his coat slid away.
But Rook didn’t move; he only regarded me indolently from the ground, with a look that plainly said he didn’t much feel like going anywhere, thank you very much.
“Get up.” I nudged his side with my shoe, hoping he couldn’t sense how forced my composure truly was. “Come on. We can’t lie about all morning like lumps.”
He allowed my nudge to flop him over onto his back. “But I’m injured,” he complained. “I haven’t finished healing myself yet.”
“You’re looking very well to me. If you insist that you’re in pain, however, I ought to take another look at your wound without your glamour on. The inflammation may have returned.”
His eyes narrowed. Then he extended his hand. Unthinkingly I reached for it to help pull him up. But as soon as our skin touched he clasped his fingers around mine and pulled, and I landed on his chest with a thump. The coat drifted down after, settling neatly over our legs. Rook gave me a charming smile. I glared back at him.
“I’ll use iron on you!”
“If you must,” he said sufferingly.
“I really will!”
“Yes, I know.”
I became conscious of the fact that his chest felt very solid, and I was straddling his slim waist. Our uneven breathing rocked us against each other slightly. Molten heat pooled in me again, ebbing lower.
I didn’t use iron on him.
Instead, I leaned down and kissed him.
Ten
THIS IS a terrible decision, I thought. I’ve gone completely mad and I need to stop this instant.
But then Rook made a sound and parted his lips beneath mine, and I’m afraid that for a time I ceased listening to my brain entirely.
I lost myself in the hypnotizing press of give and take, the odd but intoxicating feeling of joining my mouth with his. Soon I felt Rook’s palm slide down my back, and in one graceful, powerful movement he swept me up in his hands. I automatically tightened my legs around his waist and hooked my arms around his neck, boggling at how high off the ground he’d lifted me. It was almost like riding him as a horse again—a thought that made me turn red as a tulip. He took a few steps across the clearing, and a tree’s rough bark pressed against my back. That touch was enough to jostle me partway back into reality.
Even though Emma had been careful to educate me on the specifics of this sort of thing (or perhaps because she had, quite frankly), a surge of nervousness warred with desire in the pit of my stomach. Noticing how rigid I’d gone, Rook drew back. He waited, his breath soft on my face. His lips were flushed, almost bruised. I wondered what I looked like and, recalling the pimple, instantly wished I hadn’t.
“Um,” I said. “I’ve never . . . that is to say . . .” I completely lost my nerve. “Are your teeth still sharp, technically? Because they don’t feel sharp at all. I don’t understand how that works.”
He was breathing heavily, eyes unfocused. He frowned a little, coming back to himself as he processed my anxious carrying on. “I’ve never made a study of glamour’s properties. All I know is that it isn’t the same as shapeshifting, but it’s more than a mere illusion. I won’t harm you.” My reluctance dawned on him. His shoulders stiffened. “If you’d rather not—”
I swooped in and silenced him with another kiss. I moved too fast and our noses bumped together, which hurt a bit, but he didn’t seem to mind. My heart still hammered like a frightened rabbit’s. By reflex I tightened my fingers in his hair, and again he made that noise—the one that pulled me taut as a bowstring inside. I flexed against him without meaning to, and both heard and felt his braced palm slide down the bark next to my ear.
Fascinated, I studied him. He met my eyes. I gave his hair a second, experimental tug. He let his head fall a little to the side, in the direction of my hand. Somehow I knew what that meant: he’d give me complete control if I wanted it. A rush of pure unadulterated want knocked the air out of my lungs and, ironically, knocked some sense into my brain.
“We can’t do this!” I exclaimed. “We’re stopping. Now. Oh, god.”
I loosened my legs and gripped his shoulders to let myself down. He got the hint before I took an ignoble drop, and lowered me to the ground. His face had gone a bit gray, and his expression was stricken.
I demanded of him, “Have we broken the Good Law? Did that count?”
“No,” he replied hoarsely. “Not unless—” He halted and shook his head. “No,” he repeated, in a surer voice. He cleared his throat. “If fair folk and mortals broke the Good Law every time we—ah—kissed each other, suffice it to say there’d be few of us left.”
“Sex really does turn people into imbeciles,” I said, amazed at having committed yet another base human error to which I’d somehow thought myself immune. “Rook, we can’t do that again. I’m really using the iron next time. That isn’t a bluff.”