Chapter 223: Something like falling 2

BONNIE

"Oh," I said. "Oh, goddess. That is..."

"Wonderful?"

"That is ’freezing!’"

"You are very dramatic."

"You told me it was warm!"

"I told you it was not cold. There is a difference." He had turned around and was bobbing a few feet away, grinning at me with a joy so pure that I wanted to splash him. So I did, a big handful that caught him full in the face.

He sputtered. "You should know that is assault on the Regent."

"It is assault on a liar."

"I am not a liar. I am an optimist."

I treaded water, teeth chattering, and the cold began to change. It stopped being a blow and started to feel like a hand, strong and impersonal, pressing the thoughts out of me one by one. The sky was enormous overhead. A few stars had begun to prick through. My hair floated around my shoulders, and the lake rocked me gently, and I felt something in my muscles give up the long, tiring habit of bracing.

"There," Lysander murmured, watching my face. "You feel it."

"Feel what?"

"Everything that is not important dropping away."

I tipped my head back, my ears slipping under the water for a second, and when I lifted it again, the world was very quiet.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now," he said, "you can focus on the things that matter."

He began to swim toward me.

It was not a fast approach. He moved the way he did everything when he was enjoying it, unhurried and certain, long smooth strokes that sent small waves lapping against my collarbone. His eyes never left mine. In the dusk they had gone nearly forest black.

"And what is that?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I intended.

"For me?" He stopped an arm’s length away. "It would be walking toward the warmest thing in sight. And that is you."

I stared at him.

"That was a very bad line."

"I think it was a good line."

"It was awful. It was so cheesy that I can feel my teeth hurting."

"Yet you are smiling."

"I am not."

"You are smiling. I know when a woman is trying very hard not to."

He was right. I pressed my lips together, and the corners of my mouth stubbornly refused to cooperate.

"The bond is humming," he went on, in the same mild, conversational voice. "Did you know? It does that when you are happy. It purrs. I can feel it in my sternum, like a cat on a windowsill."

"Do not call me a cat."

"I would never. A cat would have waited on the dock."

"You are insufferable."

"And yet you came in. You must like my brand of insufferable."

I pushed a wave at him with the flat of my hand. He caught it on the chest without flinching, and the water ran down his skin in glittering threads, and I made the mistake of watching it go. His throat. The hollow of his collarbone. The broad plane of his chest, rising and falling. Every inch of him was gilded, dripping and unabashedly there.

I looked up. He was watching me look.

"It has been a while," he said quietly.

The humor had gone out of his voice. What replaced it was lower and rougher, with a catch near the end like the snag of a nail on silk.

"A while," I repeated.

"Since I have had you to myself. No royal or court drama. No ghosts." His hand rose out of the water and hovered an inch from my cheek. "Only this."

I did not answer. I could feel his breath on my face, warm against the cold. I could feel the bond between us pulling taut, a bright, humming wire stretched across the inches that separated our mouths.

"May I?" he whispered.

"You are going to ask?"

"Always I hear consent is hot."

I closed the gap myself.

His mouth was cool at first, tasting of lake and the faint sweetness of the wine he had drunk at lunch. For a moment the kiss was soft, a question, a hello. Then his hand slid into my wet hair and cradled the back of my head, and a low sound came out of his throat, and it was no longer a question at all.

I wound my arms around his neck. The water pressed us together, slick and weightless, and I felt the shock of his skin against mine from collarbone to knee, warm where the lake was cold. A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the chill.

"Bonnie," he breathed against my lips.

"Do not talk."

"I only..."

"Lysander."

I kissed him harder, and he made a rough noise and answered, the kiss deepening and quickening until it was hungry, a thing with teeth and appetite, week of waiting and days of fear pouring into it all at once. His arm locked around my waist, and I felt my feet leave the soft mud of the bottom. His hand traced up the length of my spine. Mine found the back of his neck, his shoulders, the hard wet muscle beneath. I could not seem to get close enough. Every breath we shared tasted of lake water and heat.

The bond sang. It sang so loudly that I thought the whole valley must hear it, a bright, ringing chord rising through my chest and out into the dusk.

He tore his mouth away to drag in air, his forehead pressed to mine, his breathing ragged.

"I am going to drown," he murmured.

"You are a very strong swimmer."

"I am not talking about the lake."

I laughed, helpless, my eyes closed, and felt him laugh too, the vibration of it passing from his chest into mine. Then I pulled his face back down to my own, and the stars came out one by one above the pines, and neither of us noticed.

His mouth moved against mine, slow now, unhurried, as though we had all the time in the world. I brushed my fingers through his wet hair, and he tightened his arm around my waist, drawing me closer until there was scarcely room for the lake between us.

When I finally broke away to breathe, he followed, stealing another kiss from the corner of my mouth.

"We should take this upstairs." He said.